Primal
by Chrome
Summary: Even your precious daddy never knew you, did he? You were his before you were ever mine Mary, but you gave yourself to me willingly, you know that. I never made you love me. SOME TWINCEST DV DL LV
1. Chapter 1

**_A/N_: Hey there! This is actually my first DMC fanfic. For a long time I kept on reading and reading and then feeling that after a while, I wasn't really finding anything that I found interesting (or hadn't already read 10 times over) in the fandom. So I kind of decided that maybe the best idea was to create a story that I would enjoy and that I hoped others would too. Please review if you have time!**

**_SUMMARY_: Basically, the summary is a tad up in the air at the moment, or really, if I tried to summarize it, would probably end up looking like a psycho! haha.. So I will say that this is actually based after the Temen-ni-gru and follows (to a certain extent) the basic format already set in the game. There are a few twists which is why this is DEFINITELY an A/U. **

**_DISCLAIMER:_ I do not own Devil May Cry or the characters affiliated with it. **

**Primal**

**Chapter One**

"Dante?" She coughed, waving away the lazily lines of cigarette smoke that drifted before her eyes, her multi-pigmented pupils darting through the darkness. A shapely pair of legs nearly tripped her as she walked clumsily through the haze of the nightclub, a middle finger pointed up towards her as she shuffled over people lying over each other in the darkness. "Dante? Where the fuck ARE you?"

The tumultuous music seemed in ryhthm with her pulse, her fingers scanning the rough surface of concrete on either side of her body as she continued through the damp hallway, the sounds and scents of sex making her wince.

Why did he do this? Why?

For some time, she had seen him as a rather eccentric type, those that moved through life to a tune unheard by others. Sometimes, it seemed even being around him was a type of aphrodisiac, his life's aura seemingly euphoric on the battlefield. Secretly, even to herself, the very ideas of mortality seemed forgotten in the moments he stood so bravely beside her, laughing chaotically as he fired off his weapons with an ease that only he could possess.

But then the laughing didn't stop. But then the chaos didn't quell.

And now?

Now she walked, as she had often these days walked, through the sex drenched hallway of a nearby nightclub, the ceiling itself seemingly coated in semen and bodily fluids she didn't want to think of.

For a while, Dante had seemed rather balanced (if a devil hunter could be considered such, the idea seemed rather ridiculous to voice) his arrogance and posture never crumbling as he marched through his days after the Temen-ni-gru with the same cockiness he had ceaselessly employed while in the monstrous tower. She had often gazed at him, watching as he carelessly shifted himself on his chair, feet thrown (shoeless) over a desk as he pondered a thousand things he would never tell her. And she had thought he was beautiful.

Yes. Yes, he was beautiful.

It seemed (and yes, how cliche she felt even describing him this way) that his features had been created based on some sort of ancient statue. The seeming perfection was startling at best and she could easily recall the strange sensation her body had felt often around him at first: mortality. Faced with the unnatural beauty that he apparently had inherited from his bloodline, her body had acted on a 6th sense, the feeling as though one had instantaneously become prey, become vulnerable. As she watched other humans collide with his world, she realized very quickly that this was a sense that all mortals dealt with in his vicinity; he scared them. They knew, in whatever sense they could subconsciously project, that something amongst them wasn't right, or really, wasn't "normal" in their world.

But he was beautiful. Even the pigment in his eyes gave away his so-called "clash" with humanity, the irises too fierce, too primal for a man. His pupils themselves were ultimately too small, too compact and too clouded with harsh, piercing blue that at times, in his most animalistic moments, she could swear that he had no pupils at all, only burning, blue fire between his long, dark eyelashes.

When she had first seen his hair, she had been certain an old man had caught her, the creamy, white strands dancing on his forehead, hiding the obviously young portions of his face. And yet as she had seen him later, her breath hitching as she was forced to take in the immaculate beauty of his bloodline, she realized that in his furious youth, Dante would probably never die. Was he immortal as a demon? Was he living as a man? Or really, could a soul quite like Dante's ever die despite both?

As Vergil was icy and cold, Dante was fire and he raged in everything he did.

Ah yes, Vergil. Lady knew her face had contorted even in the darkness, her scowl probably quite a clash with the usual facial features used in a place like this. As she heard the slapping of flesh against flesh, his face came to mind and she felt herself tremble even in the scolding heat of the club. No coincidence that the sound of rough, painful sex could bring the older twin to mind and she hated admitting the fact.

Vergil? Vergil was pure sex.

As some people emanated auras of pure sexual indifference, asexual tendencies even, Vergil's every gesture reeked of sex, despite his knowing it or not. Even as Dante screamed of promiscuity, Vergil, for whatever incredible strange reason, purely pumped with sex it seemed; like it coursed through his veins or something. Every movement, down to the grasp of his hand on Yamato's hilt, seemed an open invitation, his eyes glowering with promises of sadism and debauchery.

How someone so cold, so withdrawn could burn you with a stare was completely beyond Lady's thinking. Yet in all the monster that he was to her, Dante loved him unconditionally. If demons were the opposite of angels, how was it that one could love so much more completely than any person she had ever known? All love, in her mind, was conditional of something.

Unconditional love in the bible didn't cover homosexuality, didn't cover promiscuity, didn't cover angels that fell from heaven by choice. Yet Dante's love was greater than that. Dante loved his brother in ways that she doubted humans could even fathom, could even define. In all the pain she'd experienced killing her own father, she knew that in this lifetime or the next, she would never really understand Dante's complete detachment from reality that came the day he lost Vergil.

A few months afterwards, she began to notice things. Little things, she supposed. Odd gestures that came from insomnia, strange admissions that spawned from heavy drinking. She had never been naive to Dante's loose behavior, nor to his apparent love affair with alcohol but days came and went, victims lived and died and Dante would be found only later, bathing in sweat and sex as he burrowed his time in the nightlife.

Passion that had once seeped from every pore in his body now seemed just an old memory, never to be relived. Everything he'd ever believed in or fought for seemed tedious and boring to him, her feverish pleas with him whisked away with flicks of his wrist.

And now he had grown colder, more withdrawn than ever, sometimes feeling no need to even answer her or look at her when she begged him to leave these places, to live again, exist again. Weren't there days when he would at least humor her, sighing deeply as he climbed to his feet, took a shower, threw on his clothes and joined her in the hunt?

"Dante, answer me." She growled, knowing he was here, feeling it in her body as she came closer to the sounds of feminine moans and gasps. She grit her teeth, knowing precisely what would meet her, yet startled as always when the predictable came to view.

He laid there, slightly tilted back in a black, dirty chair, his eyes staring upwards. The paleness of his skin reflected some of the dim light, his chest bare and covered with sweat. Still, she might not have seen him through the shadows had it not been for the fact that his eyes radiated light even when there was no light, glowing in the darkness and illuminated, it seemed to her, by an inner brilliance that both he and his brother possessed. His beautiful, soft white hair was laid back from his forehead, reminding her sickly of Vergil, as three women's heads were bowed in his lap. Sucking sounds quickly made her nauseated and she crossed her arms, blowing a strand of her brown hair from her eyes.

"I see you're upholding your heroic title Dante," She said in a dark voice, her tongue going into her cheek peevishly. "The great son of Sparda, saving the world with blowjobs. Tch..." she spat. "you're pathetic."

"I'm also bored," He grinned wickedly, rolling his eyes at her before keeping them staring at the ceiling. "So why don't you save your little boyscout speech precious?"

"Why don't you save anything Dante?" She retorted angrily, clacking the sole of her boot on the filthy floor, ignored by the three women still attacking his lap. "I swear it. You were given Godlike powers by your father to save and to protect. And look at you now?" She shook her head glaring at him. "Wouldn't daddy be thrilled."

His hand grasped hers before she'd even seen it move, the unnatural coldness of his touch sending chills through her spine and neck. Like iron, his freezing flesh coiled around her wrist, the pupils in his eyes so small it appeared as though he stared at her through blue-tinted ice. Her own gaze caught sight of lines running up his arms, track-marks from whatever filth he'd probably injected at some point.

"And what would dearest Arkham think if he saw his darling precious now," He whispered coldly, pulling her towards him. "killing the very things he wanted to become himself?"

She swallowed hard, meeting his vicious gaze.

"I guess we both disappointed someone," He sighed, letting her go.

She grit her teeth, fighting back emotion at his cruel words, fighting back emotions that willed her to slap him, beat him unconscious and carry his useless ass away from this place and its poison.

"Dante..." She breathed, hating the weakness and trembling in her voice. "What ... what happened to you?"

"And why do you care?" He let his eyes slide lazily to her, his hand cupping the back of a woman's head as it bobbed up and down. His breathing began to hitch as he came closer to climax, the lower portion of his abdomen rising and falling as he sucked in air. He smiled at her, the gesture seeping with sex, making her body heat as his eyes traveled down her. "Beautiful girl, why do you care?"

"I..." She started before realizing that the sentence would go no where, her swallow stopped as she felt the cold pads of his fingers trickle up her arm, his gaze making her feel entirely naked. "I don't."

She straightened up, yanking away from him and hardening her resolve.

"I don't care."

"Fair enough," He smirked wickedly, pushing the women off of him as he stood proudly, leather pants barely wrapped around his lower section as he held his arms out almost triumphantly. His breathing was harsh, spurned by his body's sexual anticipation, sweat gleaming like stars as it journeyed down his chest. "I would be crazy to think otherwise, now wouldn't I Lady?"

His hands were suddenly on her, her body forced into a wall as he held her powerfully against it, the press of his form between her legs making her dizzy. He breathed acrossed her neck, moving from one side to the other, like a wild cat teasing its food, toying with the prospect of life or death. She shivered against him, trying to put distance where there could be none, trying to pry his hard body away from her.

"Imagine," he sighed sexually, tracing his lips over her jawline, his finger smoothing over her collarbone and journeying downwards. "The Great Arkham's Angel in love with a Devil."

He scoffed, his hot breath on her mouth as his eyes burned into her, lips so close she could almost taste them.

"You couldn't write stories that hilarious."

With that he let her go almost forcefully, pushing her towards the hallway. Watching her recoil from him, face twisted with sickness, he smiled sadistically, grabbing up one of the women and throwing her stomach-down on the chair before moving himself behind. Lady trembled in the shadows as she walked backwards, seemingly unable to look away, in horror at him, at the thing that he'd become. He forced himself deep within the unknown woman, the heat and flesh and warmth of a human body igniting a primal flame within him, making him pound painfully inside of her, his eyes never leaving the multi-tinted pair that stared, terror-filled from the shadows.


	2. Chapter 2

**_A/N: Thanks to those that read and reviewed the firstchapter. I will say that this story is quite ... different and very A/U. Characters may seem OOC, but then, I suppose that's all in how you view them. This is my version. Thanks for reading and please review if you have the time! _**

Primal

Chapter 2

"You soulless bastard," She prodded, her feet crunching the snow beneath as she followed him. He had stormed from the building only seconds before, wrapping his coat peevishly over his bare shoulders, the pulsating music following him outside, much like she was at the moment.

"That's what they tell me," He shrugged, punching his fists into his pockets as he lowered his head in the cold, the wind and snow wiping against his face. He pulled one hand from his coat, lighting a cigarette between his teeth before plowing on, seemingly oblivious to Lady's following, even when she came next to him, scowling.

"That shit will kill you, you know," She snapped, hugging her own coat closer to her chin, glaring at the speed he insisted they use.

"Promises promises," He smirked, teeth still holding the burning cigarette, gasps of cold air and smoke being quickly moved through as he heightened his pace.

She just glared even harder, quickening her shorter legs to keep up with him. He seemed at home in this climate, his frosty, pale hair thrown carelessly around as though it were dancing, the light in his eyes brighter, more playful as he dared her to keep up with him. His face was pure beauty, unhindered by darkness as the moon occasionally kissed the earth with its rays, sliding over the brilliance of his skin and the fullness of his mouth. His eyes glanced towards her, a light nearby making her blood run a tad colder as his vision reflected it as an animal's would when caught by the sheen of a car's headlights. For a moment they appeared to be made of chrome, glinting only when he blinked, smiling as if he read her mind.

Smiling as if to say, 'ahh, but I've reminded you haven't I? Place me by human standards angel. See me as man. I'll only take the inevitable opportunity to remind you that I am, indeed, a devil.'

Yet even in that moment, she was also reminded of his youth, the flicker of his childhood still clutching at the soft skin of his face, the smooth planes of his eyelids. Did he ever smile like this with Vergil? Did the moon in some way, in those days, rejuvenate life inside him, rebirth that which had died? For but a split second, she saw his world if Vergil were to return and realized that she could never have the same impact as his brother could. Were Vergil to return, Dante would become the legendary Phoenix, destroyed in fire and then reborn from the ashes.

"Dante slow down," She begged him, his pace now simply too fast to keep up with, despite the fact that she was running beside him. "Dante, stop!"

But he only shrugged her away, continuing on until he was nearly running himself. Desperately she watched him go, her breath like fire in her lungs as she watched him, gracefully gliding like liquid over the piles of snow. Buildings loomed over him, soft lighting from windows illuminating his gorgeous form, illuminating that which wasn't human, that which could never abide by the rules or standards she set for him.

"He's not coming back Dante!" She finally cried, her voice hoarse. That stopped him and she gulped hard, seeing his stillness in the distance. "He's not coming back."

She panted, walking slowly up to him, her breath coming in great gasps of fog.

"No matter how fast you run."

He turned to her, the cigarette now seething embers between his teeth, quickly spat onto the ground and demolished by the falling flakes of snow.

"You don't know that." He said, visibly swallowing. She was torn now, between telling the truth, between telling that which she had originally come to say. She looked into his eyes, wanting so badly to voice that which had spurned her into that Godless establishment, that which had forced her to look at him in his lowest hour. She wanted to tell him, to tell him everything, to show him a sort of freedom that only the truth could provide.

Yet, could that freedom destroy she wondered?

"Dante," she sighed, moving a close as she dared. "He's not coming back. He can't come back. And..." She shook her head, looking down. "And even if he could, things cannot be like they were; like you thought they once were."

"Like I THOUGHT they once were?" He snapped, eyes blazing as he stood straight (nearing seven intimidating feet tall) and gazed down at her. "What the hell are you implying? That everything, every minute, every day, every everything about my brother is just some figment of my impossibly deranged imagination? That I only THINK he was my best friend; that I only THINK he tried to save my mother and ended up saving me instead? That I only THINK he's damn near the ONLY reason I'm even here today? Well fuck what YOU think because you can shove it where I think."

He stormed away, face a mask of fury.

"I know that he's your brother," She called afterwards, summoning all of her courage to say what she knew she had to. "I know that he always will be to you and I know that you will always love him. But Dante," She sighed, hanging her head in sorrow and exasperation. "Damn it. He doesn't LOVE you.."

Dante stopped once more, vision glued to the snow as he ground his teeth in his head, his jaw becoming a tense ball in his cheek.

"He CAN'T love you," She told him. "So stop looking for salvation in the heart of a monster. Stop looking at him and seeing yourself in his eyes because it's just a lie."

"Shut up."

"No," She said firmly, standing up straight. "You shut up. Stop this shit. Stop this running, this useless attempt at killing yourself, at killing your legacy, at killing anything and any memory you hold dear. Stop thinking that if you act like a big enough BASTARD that you'll get sent precisely where your bastard brother went! You ARE what you ARE Dante but you are NOT HIM!"

His lips bent downwards, his teeth still fixed tightly together. She knew she had gone too far, possibly gone there long before the revelation dawned on her yet she stayed where she was, her eyes focused only on him.

"There is more that you don't know Dante," She blinked hard, watching him perk up to the idea. "More that..." She tore her gaze from his, unable to keep contact. "More that I don't even want to tell you. More that you probably don't even want to believe."

There was silence as she bid him to speak, to either dismiss her entirely or to spurn her on. His lips looked dry and cracked, his face a mask of cruelty, just as Vergil's had constantly been. She trembled slightly in her coat, making a fist to stop the movement. The thickness of his lips parted, saying nothing as though unable to speak or form the words, his eyes darting anywhere but her.

"Tell me." He said finally, as if knowing, someplace inside himself, that what she knew could possibly devastate him.

"Dante," She spoke his name seriously, wanting him to look at her and yet daring herself to return the gesture. "I don't even think he is your brother. Dante," she pursed her lips. "I think he's something else."

His face cracked and he exploded in laughter, pointing a wiggling finger at her as he laughed, rolling his eyes.

"You," he shook his finger, shaking his head. "You had me for a second there Angel."

"I'm not kidding!" She insisted, glaring her best bout' of poison. "Listen to me! I was going through some of my father's old things about a week ago, his experiments, his research. Sick things, demented obsessions, mathematical equations for evil. Unbelievable things. And then I fell upon this," She reached inside her coat, pulling out a dusty, stained old book. He shifted through it, face a charade of disinterest. "I know it doesn't seem to make any sense- "

"Or even be in a known language." He cut her off dryly.

"Yes, but-.."

"Shh.." He held a hand out towards her, eyebrows squinting together as he gazed harder at a certain page. A drawing was made, scratched crudely on the surface of the paper, that which resembled a small boy holding onto the bars of what seemed to be a cage. "This is the equation for life," He breathed. "for existence I mean."

"Yes," Lady nodded quickly, eyes wide. "That's what I'm trying to tell you." she stared at him straight in the eyes. "If what these papers told me is true, your mother and father couldn't have conceived you naturally through childbirth."

"What?" He raised an eyebrow, looking at her as though she were crazy.

"From what this book says," She whispered, gazing at the book with slight horror. "Eva and Sparda were indeed in love. But there's something else. Sparda knew he was going to die. Dante, your dad KNEW that Mundus would find a way to defeat him and so he did. But not before Sparda could convince Eva to have a child with him, despite the very grim fate they more or less figured they would meet as a result. Unfortunately though, they couldn't conceive you through natural means, his demonic sperm unable to spark life in someone that was foreign to his world."

"Could you please skip with the demonic origin of the birds and the bees and just fucking get on with it?" he snarled.

"Damn it," She scowled. "Do you understand what I'm trying to tell you? Do you even grasp it? They damn near GREW you in a FUCKING lab!"

"That is...so stupid." He shook his head. "So stupid it's laughable. Your crazy father writes some deranged book about the process of life and my family and you're only too willing to barge in and interrupt my shit with your lousy beliefs in someone you shot in the head. You're just as cracked-out crazy as he was."

He tossed the book into her arms, features contorted with anger.

"Please," She begged him, against her will, grabbing his arm. "Just listen to me. Sparda KNEW that the world would need a savior after he was gone, that he would need to continue his line through a child. Your mother found a way to combine his seed with hers and to form life through that. But the balancing forces of good and evil knew that a son from the legendary would become one of two things: extraordinarily good, able to turn the tides of victory to the side of good... or the other one: extraordinarily evil. Don't you see what I'm trying to tell you? Don't you get it?" She shook him by the shoulders, making him look at her furiously. "The sides, the genes, split Dante! Your mother and father played God and the result was what you could call a ghost in the machine, a split in the fates. You were given the side of good, the side of soul. And your 'brother', the mistake, the abomination, was given the side of evil."

Dante made a fist, grabbing her back, teeth gleaming from beneath a vicious snarl.

"I swear to you Lady," He promised in a hoarse whisper. "If you were ANYONE else..."

She yanked violently away from him, sizing him up even from her obvious height difference, pushing him back.

"And what difference would any of this make regardless?" He spat, gorgeous features tilted with anger. "He was my brother, my everything, regardless of what choices he made, of who you or anyone else say he was. Nothing you say can change any of it. None of what you say can change the fact that he laughed with me, had birthdays with me, shared secrets with me. Nothing you say can erase Christmas or Halloween or any of that trivial bullshit that HE spent with me. It can't bring him back and it can't make him seem like anything less than my brother."

"Yes but don't you get that?" She asked him. "He isn't even a person. He isn't a brother. He's a thing, Dante. And those memories, here, look," She pointed to a page he refused to even glance at. "According to my father, Mundus supplied everything. From your first holidays together to the memory of Vergil saving you. Vergil never even LIVED with you Dante. When he was five, he was taken to the underworld, memories supplied from Mundus so that WHEN and IF Vergil decided to create an uprising, your OWN CREATED memories would make it so that you'd be unable to stop him, to finally finish him. Don't you see? They're all lies! Which means that thing you miss so much, that thing you love, that thing you call your brother...? It's just a dead THING Dante."


	3. Chapter 3

"To see the world through scarlet eyes and watch the unclean feast, she follows yet and falls sure more and still she sees the beast.." He recited, a cruel smile over his mouth as he removed his coat, throwing it carelessly on the victorian, red velvet chair. She followed him inside of Devil May Cry, snow packed tracks imprinted on the smooth wooden floor.

He put his tongue in his cheek, seeing her come through the doorway, raising his arms. "Come in."

She didn't miss the roll of his eyes, nor did she care, unbuttoning her fur jacket and tossing it next to his on the chair before crouching by the fire on the right side of the large room. Dante was forever a victim of his own decoration, the room holding a very ancient, Roman theme, barbarically littered with monstrous demon heads. She eyed the demonic blood that leaked over the heads, never drying as human's did, glittering now as if dancing to the unheard beat of the fire.

Lady absent-mindedly rubbed her aching feet through her shoes, trying to regain feeling when her toes felt like they'd been frozen together in one big clump. Dante had, in the meantime, lazily positioned himself upon the couch, tight black turtle-neck clinging to his body like a second skin, revealing every beautiful line and feature that the flickering flames graced. His head had fallen back over the arm rest, his soft, white hair falling from his face as he breathed, throat slightly exposed. She shook her head, trying to diminish the vision of Vergil, trying to stop the automatic reaction she always got whenever Dante's hair didn't rest so messily before his eyes.

"Dante, I know you love him." She spoke quietly.

"Still on that stale old tune I see," His rough voice rasped out, strained by his position. He stretched himself nonchalantly, the tight red leather of his pants groaning as he rest his hands on his large, skull belt buckle.

"Because you're not listening to me," She caught herself, holding back her tone from shouting. "You're completely imploding here and it's all for no fucking reason. I feel like I'm just sitting back, just fucking SITTING here, watching you slowly destroy everything I thought you cared about. I feel like..." She swallowed. "I feel like... shit, Dante I don't even know you anymore. You're behaving like... like I've never seen you behave before. Drinking like, GOD! I've NEVER seen anyone-"

"Uh huh, uh huh," he nodded, toying with her.

"Sexually sadistic," She was going on. "A damn monster half the time-"

"Uhhh huh," he drilled out, turning his head towards her. "And if the point actually comes up where I'm supposed to give a fuck, please," he smirked with no humor, "let me know."

She growled low, her anger slowly building.

"The point is," She continued. "you're hurting yourself. You're depressed, God knows you're lonely but you need to get through this ok?"

She slowly got to her feet, moving to kneel beside the couch.

"I know you miss them," She touched his forearm. "I know it hurts. And I know that if you were anyone else, hell, I'd probably tell you to just give up and let yourself die if nothing else was worth fighting for. But it isn't just you Dante. A lot of lives and people depend on you, on who you are and what you do. The whole WORLD needs you Dante. You were given a gift, a responsibility to protect them. And yeah, ok, we get it: you didn't ask for it. But you still have it, nonetheless and THAT'S the part where you need to give a fuck. We need you--I need you. And I need you to be strong."

"Are we going to have sex?"

Her eyes became saucers and she wrenched her hand away as if burned.

"Wh-... WHAT!"

"Well I was just curious," He smirked. "Most of the time when you let a woman in your home, listen to her for a good enough amount of time, you get the gift for good behavior afterwards. I was just wondering if that's the case here or if I should just kick you out now and save myself the trouble of the boring shit."

"Why you...son of..."

Before she knew it, she was sprawled out ontop of him, her back against his powerful chest and her eyes staring wide at the ceiling looming over them. She gasped as his hands held her too tightly, eyes stretched to their limit as she watched the flickering reflection of flames on the surface of the ceiling.

"Dante stop!" She snarled, flailing about helplessly as he pressed himself against her, his hand on her stomach as he moved his body harshly against her backside, his mouth on her throat.

"Ohhhhhh..." he breathed, voice dripping with sex. "Come on Lady. Give in. Fuck me. You know you want to."

"Never," She spat, struggling as his hand held hers in a vise-like grip.

"Ahhh but I know you do," he whispered, voice harsh and cold. "I can smell it all over you."

His hand moved to her thigh, pushing up the material of her skirt, his cold skin making her tremble as he placed his hand between her legs.

"It's a shame," He laughed lightly, though no humor was held in it, his cold lips on her neck. "What a stupid name I had to give you. Lady. Peh. I believe you've simply taken it all too far my sweet angel."

"Seriously now," She swallowed, hating the heat his touch sent into her skin, hating how every area his fingers moved around became that much more sensitive, that much more like the sensation of liquid fire pumping in her veins. "Let me go."

"Is that really what you want?" His tongue moved up the length of her throat, his hand catching her face and moving it almost painfully to look at him. She breathed hard against his mouth, eyes searching his for some sort of feeling, for something that registered more than emotional detachment and coldness that rivaled even his brother's. His mouth dared hers to kiss him, his eyes lingering over her lips, hot breath making her feel intoxicated and dizzy. She stared at him, suddenly feeling as though she couldn't breathe, hating herself for wanting to kiss him, for staying still while his filthy hands, hands that had not minutes before been on someone else, touched her in places no man ought to without damn near written permission.

Consciousness returned to her when she felt his hand in between her thighs once more, moving the delicate folds of her panties out of the way as he touched her most sacred place.

"And I can't help but wonder," He spoke in a soft, mockingly sweet voice. "if you do, indeed, TASTE like a lady."

She struggled ruthlessly this time, kicking at him as he pushed a finger up inside of her, feeling the tight walls of her vagina constrict almost painfully around him. He trembled against her, breath hitching as he sighed his approval. Another finger went inside, her writhing and struggling doing nothing to hinder him. She almost wondered if he preferred it this way, his most sadistic, raunchy side in full heat at her unwillingness to bow for him.

He fingered her damn near painfully, his thumb moving circles around her clitoris and his other two fingers digging against her rough G-spot inside. She was becoming enraged and enthralled, wanting to pummel him and then kill herself for reacting so obviously to what he was doing. Cum dripped down his fingers already, her insides coated with it against her will.

"You're so wet," He smiled against her ear. "Why are you fighting me?"

Her lips shook as she tried to speak, still trying to escape though her thighs parted all the more for him.

"I know you love it when I touch you like THIS," He pushed his fingers hard inside her, gaining a stifled cry as a result. "I know you love it when I touch you here," His free hand that had been holding her moved between her breasts, tracing the underneath lightly. "And I know you love it when I kiss you like this."

But rather than a kiss, his teeth sank into her throat, a hoarse cry resounding through her esophagus as she nearly came with the impact, her body lurching upwards against his hand. He held her right breast, holding her steady as he caressed it painfully.

"D-..Dante.." She whispered, eyes closed as she shook, so close as he violently rubbed her clit. Her thighs trembled around his hand and she smoothed her own palm over the soft surfaces, panting and crying softly as he pushed his hand beneath her shirt and bra, rubbing her painfully erect nipples.

Her body suddenly became hard and she bucked against him, forcing out a cry as he brought her over the edge, the inner walls of her vagina shuttering and pulsing around his fingers as they were further coated with cum. Her body became like granite, tense as she moaned out her climax, against everything she'd wanted her body to do, cumming for him.

He held her body close, feeling every convulsion of her vagina, feeling the violent intake of air as every portion of her strained against him, suppressing a scream as she drenched his fingers. He rubbed his face against hers, loving the sensual coating of sweat that lined every pore, seeing his twin's face reflected at him from the mirrors above on the ceiling, the cold, detached features that slowly lifted his fingers into his mouth, tasting the pearly cum that had soaked them moments before.

"And isn't that odd," He smiled, watching what looked like Vergil's face smirk wickedly, all humor gone from burning blue eyes. "Your name is Lady..."

She sighed, moving in to kiss him, to finalize this physical attachment with that which would be considered something akin to adoration.

"Yet," His beautiful twin spoke, voice sounding like his own. "You taste just like a whore."

A raspy hitching of breath could be heard, Lady's body first becoming limp, as though she'd heard him wrong, and then like it'd been covered in cement, yanking away from every portion of him that touched her. She became pale, lifting off the couch, face a mask of complete repulsion.

"What did you just say?" She shuddered, though knowing well enough exactly what he'd spoken.

He stood lazily, still sucking the tips of his fingers though all taste of her was sadly gone, eyes a charade of cruelty, just as his brother's always were. In fact, it frightened her, the complete isolation from humanity that lingered in once beautiful, mischievous eyes, now coated just like Vergil's always were.

And then just like that, she pulled on her coat, stepping into his face and punching it three times, her knuckles nearly breaking from the impact. One, two, three, his face flew to the side, her hits consisting of every last amount of power her humanity would allow, the skin over her fingers bruised as she yanked them back, suppressing the all too female need to sob as she stormed from Devil May Cry.

He traced his fingers numbly over the burnt mahogany desk, leaving trails of ash and dust, separated by his touch. His own breathing was all that could be heard, the sound of air passing into tar-linned lungs sounding raspy in the quiet of the ruins. How long had it been? 15 years?

Bangs across the bridge of his nose felt like the feathery flicker of a butterfly's wing, fluttering over damp, seemingly poreless flesh. He breathed. He breathed because it was all he could think or process enough to do. His eyes glanced over burned books, edges of water-colored pictures tasted with flames. He closed his eyes, looking away from old photos, dust covered with time.

A family once.

His boots sounding throughout the ruined home, the walls and ceiling a disastrous display of what was once a raging inferno within the kitchen, wood split and decrepit around him. The hallway was no different, mold creeping along the edges where rain water had failed to trap it out, the shadows playing scenes of what had once happened here.

His breath caught as he looked inside his old bedroom, _their_ old bedroom. Old toys and stuffed animals littered the floor like corpses, crayons and thin markers scattered across a small, now-off-white end table. 'Stupid markers,' he thought with a forlorn grin. 'they never did work.' The beds were placed on either side of the room, small, made for the two young boys.

"_Your father made them himself _," Eva had told them, kneeling on the floor at the edge of one, always the means of night-time stories. Always about him.

"_Your father... your father... "_

He hadn't even known his father, the hero of every bed time story, the savior that loved his family so much, he forsook everything he'd ever known for them. The father that loved them so damn much, he never even came home. Probably never looked back.

Dante swallowed hard, gritting his teeth in his mouth. _Fuck him. This IS Sparda. _His eyes glared at everything they could take in, his jaw tight. Yeah, it was Sparda alright. Nothing more than shit, dirt, promises broken, carnage and death. And then? Just the memories supplied that he tried to drink away. But solace was never found in late nights or in the valley between heaving breasts or the guttural moans of whatever stupid human male he'd taken home that evening.

No. Memories were just ashes, to stain the fingertips or the mind.

He kneeled, grasping at a small box beneath the table, burned but still able to conceal its contents. He smiled, bringing out an old stack of letters, written between the two brothers when they were only five. Amazing how quickly they had always learned, how far they surpassed their 'peers' at that age. The folded papers ached and crinkled as he opened them, the words inside written messily and large with black, permanent marker.

" _To Vergil: I'm sorry. -Dante."_

He smirked, recalling the time Eva had finally gotten fed up (and the woman's patience was never much worth mentioning) and had insisted that if they didn't have anything nice to say, they weren't going to be saying anything at all. Instead, they spent the rest of the afternoon exchanging scowls, obscene gestures learned from the TV and finally, sending notes between themselves.

He opened another, seeing the undoubtedly better hand writing of Vergil, letters written, (even at that age) as though they'd been printed on a type-writer.

"_To Dante: I hate you. I hate you. I hate you. -Vergil."_

He scowled a little, fair eyebrows wrinkling. _Little bastard._ He opened a few more, smirk widening with each one. How predictable.

_"I hate you more. -Dante."_

_"To Dante: No way. That was MY piece of cake! -Vergil."_

_"Says who? Mom said I could have it. -Dante."_

_"To Dante: I hate her too. Mr. Nero says a mom should love both her twins equal. -Vergil."_

Dante scowled. Mr. Nero had been the eldest twin's imaginary friend, often the supposed culprit of Vergil's bad behavior. Dante could even recall a very real animosity toward Vergil's "other" friend, feeling upset and left out when his brother would have secret conversations with Mr. Nero. And Mr. Nero had always called Vergil... his little angel.

_"Don't say you hate mom! I'll tell. -Vergil"_

_"To Dante: Who cares?_ _Go tell her. You're her favorite anyways! -Vergil."_

_"She loves us both just the same and you know it. ... poop face! -Dante."_

_"To Dante: Whatever. Mr. Nero says it doesn't matter anyways. Things will be different soon. -Vergil."_

_"To Vergil: I'm sorry. -Dante."_

_"To Dante: ... happy birthday Dante. -Vergil."_

The hunter choked back the lump in his throat, letting the last letter slide from his fingertips. He sagged backwards, just kneeling on the floor in a heap of red leather and weapons, sinking inside himself. He didn't want it to return, but it did, the memories of this place. Eva screaming, telling them to run, to hide. Black figures cloaked in stench of the dead or the dying, making moans like nothing he'd ever heard before. They'd just kept saying it, over and over and over like a broken record. "Sparda... Sparda..." like they had been looking for him too. Stupid fuck. Guess he'd done quite the amount of disappointing in his time.

Vergil had been the first to see it happen, running into the kitchen as it poured with flames, Eva trapped beneath the body of one of the fiends, her hand still clutching at the sword she'd driven ruthlessly into its chest.

"_Go! Vergil, take your brother NOW!"_

But he'd just stared at her, unable to flinch, unable to move as another demon appeared, thrusting a large scythe towards the crushed woman, impaling its fellow minion in the process and pinning her through.

"_Vergil PLEASE! Run damn it! Run!"_

Dante hadn't even heard the demon behind him, seeing its reflection in his mother's eyes, blade raised before it tore downwards, nearly slicing him in half. Blood shot everywhere and he thought that fire had cleaved him in two, the pain so immediate and potent. He'd fallen to his knees, bent forwards as he came crashing to his face, watching the own sick twisting of his fingers, trembling from the agony.

He had looked up, and God, how he prayed he could have kept his eyes on his fingertips, seeing Eva's convulsing body as she stared in horror at him. Fire had actually dripped from the ceiling, catching her hair and seeming to dance on her facial features as she screamed in terror, screaming as her skin melted from her skull, screaming as her head shook this way and that, insanely trying to put out the flames that ate her lips and nose right before his eyes.

Dante's body lurched forwards, hot, sour vomit splashing back into his face as it ricochet off the floor.

And Vergil had stood there as well, watching it happen, knowing he could save one and had to leave the other. God. No wonder he was so damned cold. He'd turned, looking as if he were simply made ill from watching his mother burn, his face holding no terror that should have been reflected at Dante. He'd taken a few steps, the demons seemingly stunned by his inability to fear them at the moment, his eyes burning as he'd glanced from one to another, almost seeming to size them up or something.

And then he'd moved towards the door, eyeing the knob as his fingers wrapped around it. He was going to leave Dante. Trembling fingers shook harder, blood having soaked Dante's chubby cheek as he stared, wanting to scream, wanting to move. But Vergil hadn't left, hadn't opened the door. Just when Dante had thought all hope was lost, he was lifted, one hand inflicting white-hot pain on his back, the other holding the back of his hair, almost angrily or something.

And just like that, Vergil had saved him, the demons disappearing as they launched themselves out through a window, unimaginable pain finally taking its toll on Dante's consciousness.

He'd only come here once before, grabbing his father's sword and whatever weapons he would need to become that which he became. A 15 year old trudging unseeingly through a house of memories, a life so far lived in chaos and detachment it hardly could be considered a life at all. Vergil had been an enigma ever since, making unpredictable cameos in the soap-opera-gone-wrong life that Dante lived. The two had hardly been close, their paths going in perpetually different directions. Dante had prowled the earth like a zombie for so many years, bounced from one foster family to the next. There were good. There were bad. None could ever have been called a home, raised eyebrows and furrowed brow lines soon turned to expressions of disbelief and then horror, people seeing abilities in Dante that were what could be considered "abnormal".

People, Dante had found, liked to believe in the paranormal, the idea of "not alone" and the impossibilities proved otherwise. That was, until they were face to face with a ten year old that could lift a rolled car off a body or a 13 year old boy that could damn near levitate the basketball into a hoop during gym class. The unknown was evil to humans and that which couldn't be calculated by logic was wicked.

So at 15 years of age, he'd finished with the idea of "happy home" or "family" and finally accepted himself, for whatever monstrosity that meant embracing. He'd stopped concealing his abilities and began to test them, finding deranged excitement in what he considered was "God's or whatever's" gift for revenge, believing (if nothing else) that he had been given these powers in order to rain down justice for his mother's death. Tales of his father had never sunken in, his belief in the "great Sparda of bedtime stories" shaken with time, with the inevitably rolled eyes at the so-called "tall tales."

It was Vergil who had come to him, telling him the story of their father, confirming the fantasies and revealing the truth behind his powers. He had laid on a crusty old mattress behind a convenience store, eyes to the side as insomnia rested over him, nearly jumping out of his skin when he felt weight by his feet, cat-like burning eyes grinning at him from behind the shadows. Vergil had crawled over him, resting their foreheads together as they breathed in their reunion, Dante having wanted so much to embrace his brother, years having passed since last time.

Vergil would have none of it though, pushing away the gesture as he straddled his younger brother. A fist had crashed so quickly that Dante had never even seen it coming, his vision knocked to the side as he took a horrible blow. Adrenaline rushed into his blood stream as Vergil cruelly tore him upwards by his hair, landing an iron kick into the other twin's ribcage. Dante had doubled over from the sheer force, even in a physically violent lifetime NEVER having felt anything so immediately crushing. He'd been hit countless times from savage foster parents, locked in basements, cut with scissors and lashed with belts but NEVER had he felt a bruising force like Vergil's kick.

He'd fallen to the ground, gripping his gut and trying to force air into unresponsive lungs, Vergil's assault unhindered as he pummeled his fallen brother into the concrete. Dante had only enough time to roll to the side as a booted foot cracked the cement next to his head, right where his face had been .5 seconds before. He'd painfully lifted himself up, summoning every impossibility, every amount of strength that isolated him from the rest of the world and sending a bone-cracking punch right into Vergil's mouth.

Blood had burst between teeth and the ill sound of a jaw cracking made him nauseous, his hand pulled back as if burned when Vergil's eyes finally rolled towards him.

"_Impressive... baby brother_."

Dante had just swallowed, unable to believe the turn of events, fists still held ready for an attack. Instead, Vergil had cracked his jaw back into its lining, spitting a thick line of nearly black blood onto the ground before rubbing the back of his hand against his mouth.

_"So you're accepting who and what you are now."_ He'd smiled, letting his eyelids linger seductively over piercing blue eyes._ "You're unafraid of your abilities and you're embracing your destiny. How lovely."_

After that, they'd calmly walked, Vergil asking clipped, precise questions as to Dante's memory, as to what abilities he'd discovered. He'd insisted that Dante know everything there was to know about Sparda, about the person their father had been before, the great general of hell he'd once been. With a sour voice he'd admitted their father's tragic 'betrayal' of himself, the odd sequence of events that had eventually lead up to their births, in Vergil's opinion, Sparda's one means of redeeming himself through twin sons. He'd told Dante of their destiny, of their potential for power by embracing their strength, by becoming stronger than even the great Sparda had been.

"_You must become stronger Dante. " _He'd spoken in that cherubic, soft tone of his, the sweet outer-lining of often vicious words. _"You must become an efficient, unapologetic killer. Kill them swiftly, softly if you want, but learn to kill. It is what you were made for."_

And learn to kill, Dante had, unbelievably, though, learning the exact opposite of what Vergil had originally wanted. Dante had become the killer of devils, a demon hunter.

Unable to foresee this, Vergil had bid him farewell, watching quietly as Dante took in the quickness of his own healing abilities, realizing that even in a short time of training and testing his powers, their potency had been souped up.

_"Be in awe of yourself Dante,"_ Vergil had commented in a silky voice, eyes lowered as he approached his brother._ "Love the power of your changing body and stare in bewilderment of your own physical beauty. Believe that you can and it will be done just so."_

He had chastely locked lips with his younger twin, soothing a fingernail down the blood stained cheek of the other before twisting to leave.

_"Don't go," _Dante had insisted, eyes wide as he reached out towards Vergil. "_I just found you again!"_

But Vergil had only smiled, turning to look at the other with a wink.

"_You should know by now Dante,"_ He grinned. _"I'm never really gone from you."_

But he was now.

Dante came back from his memories, hand sliding up his torso to touch the area over his heart, hearing the slight clank of his necklace beneath his jacket. The feeling had left there when Vergil had fallen, the sensation of never being alone suddenly torn from his chest like an appendage, his tears the only solace in the moments he ran through the tower to escape. Like missing a part of his insides, he'd collapsed briefly, nearly hyperventilating as he crouched on all fours, gasping out the pain of sudden loneliness. Sand and wood and pieces of concrete had clambered down around him as he'd laid, his forehead on his hands upon the ground, screaming at the top of his lungs as everything just fell down.

Sometimes, he wished he had stayed there, hair framing his face as he cried for the first time since he could remember, in horror of the absolute loneliness he was suffering for the first time as well. The blood from his hand, courtesy of Vergil, had poured thicker than could be accounted for, leaking from his hand as though it had no intention of stopping. Like the ultimate hemophiliac, he'd watched it drain, feeling the life leave his fingers as it slid like a serpent along the floor.

And then he had thought of her, briefly, fleetingly, stupidly, but still thought of her. Of Lady's loneliness, of her pain, of the very selfish fact that they were both alone now and of the possibility of sating that fact with each other. But it hadn't been like that. She'd moved on and maybe, just maybe, he hated her a little for it. That each day he'd grown weaker from the insatiable loneliness, she'd found means of fighting against it.

In Lady's world, loneliness was a means of acting out vengeance, a justification for rage. It didn't eat at her from inside, instead, giving her the needed strength to strap automatic weapons to her holster and charge blindly into the night for the creepy crawlys. She began to live and it stole her from him. She couldn't join him in the pain, couldn't lay beside him as he imploded into it. She could only watch his decline as he lingered in loneliness as though it were his own sick obsession, all reason for dressing himself in the morning gone, save for his uncanny thirst for sex.

And sex, was, in his opinion, the only reason for self continuance left. He found himself in it, each night, bathing in it. Sex made him closer to his brother, the very scent and sensation reeking of Vergil's sadistic craving for it. But for all of his insatiable delving, sex for Vergil had always been nothing more than a way to test "other" abilities, an abnormal training session to be partaken in whenever the mood might arise. And arise, the mood, did. And often.

Dante had been the perpetually straight brother, raised in the world and victim of its social acceptabilities. Woman were like a buffet for him, Vergil's advice about admiring his physical attributes never ignored. It had been a strange thing to accept, the way that humans reacted to him, the fear he could sense from their bodies even at a tender age. He made them afraid, even standing within their vicinity, yet they longed for him all the more hungrily.

Women had simply fallen for him, the words "you're too easy to fall in love with" having been repeated very much in his short life. He barely even had to speak a word, in fact, at times, didn't, and they still crawled for him. They would have killed their own family members had he asked it, his voice always more harsh than his brother's, yet somehow delectable when he'd whisper vulgarities into the ears of strangers. Like dogs, they would accept damn near any attention he would give, bathing his lap in sweet kisses before the night was over.

Still, Vergil had been the first to ever shower him with anything of meaning and it had shocked Dante that just about anything Vergil could do was the best and above that. He'd been nineteen the first time it had happened, Vergil's yearly visit consisting of the norm which would be the complete ABNORM to anyone that wasn't them. Fists flying, blades clashing and about three thousand obscenities later, they had thrown themselves into an all out brawl, the rain almost blinding as it fell in thick drops over their hair.

Their swords had flown like extensions of their bodies, gracefully colliding in kisses of steel, teeth grit and eyes burning with intensity.

_"My my my, brother,"_ Vergil had nearly laughed, pushing himself backwards from the other. "_you've really out done yourself. And here I had half expected to find you an overweight, tax paying, child support evading low life. Time flies doesn'tit?"_

Dante had answered with a crude uppercut, scowling when he off handedly noticed the lines of glistening sweat that traced the contours of Vergil's throat. The older twin had thrown his head forward, laughing crazily as if knowing the other's reluctant thoughts, eyes beaming with a secret. Dante only ground his teeth harder, throwing a powerful fist towards that grinning face only to have it dodged and his shoulder thrown sideways, Vergil's foot smashing into his shins and effectively kicking his legs from beneath him.

He pounded into the concrete of the abandoned street, vision knocked violently upward as his chin split, the weight of the other on his back. Vergil laughed wickedly, yanking Dante's arms behind his back and holding them in an iron grip. A knee planted into the leather clad back, successfully holding Dante ground into the floor. He squirmed, twisting his body any which way to free himself, feeling a cold knife against his throat before hot, flashing pain when it slid across his bared skin.

Blood pumped furiously against the pavement, the younger devil coughing and sucking for air. Vergil had simply laughed, yanking his brother's head up with a fist threaded in the white hair, the wound splitting from the force.

_"You're so stupid,"_ He taunted in that irritatingly sweet voice, the angel masking the monster. _"You're just so fucking stupid. "_

He had waited, waited for the wound to heal, to listen to the gasps and cries from his victim, standing only when Dante had ceased writhing beneath and had opted for laying still as his demon blood did the rest of the work. Shakily the hunter had gained his footing as well, panting as he stared at the other, coming to his first concrete idea that Vergil and him were on two opposing sides of an age old war. It was the first time he'd seen real evil in that face that reflected his own, real wickedness with no apologies attached.

It was really the first time it had ever truly dawned on him that Vergil had chosen one side of the spectrum and had left Dante to either accept that, join him, or do otherwise. For as many times as Vergil had goaded him over the years to embrace their father's heritage, he had never said anything about accepting their mother's. Demon blood was all that Vergil wanted to pump through his veins, however beautiful both sides of the gene pool had made him.

_"You nearly killed me you rat bastard!"_ He'd gasped, tenderly touching the once separated mass of skin.

i _I know._Vergil had just shrugged. "_And I will. I won't hesitate Dante. If you ever try to stop me, believe me, I will kill you without a moment's thought_

Dante had frowned, brows furrowed.

_What do you mean?"_ He'd asked. "_What exactly are you planning Vergil?"_

Vergil had shrugged once more, pulling out his precious Yamato and insisting that they continue their brawl as if the attempted murder had just been a mere formality. They had fought long and hard, Dante's body pushed to its limits and then some, never having battled anyone that even slightly resembled Vergil's strength. Every attack seemed laced with murderous intent, no holds bared as they battled it out, unseen in an old, decrepit part of town.

Vergil was simply too quick, too polished in his movements as compared to Dante's "kill it, kill it hard, kill it fast, piss on the ashes" technique. He'd slid behind the other, locking one arm around the younger's neck, yanking him backwards as a hand slipped underneath his tight black tank top. Dante had tensed immediately, hearing the cryptic chuckle as fingernails painfully slid over his defined abs, leaving angry red trails behind them.

_I know you like this,_ Vergil had whispered, lips against Dante's throat. _"Or won't you allow yourself even THAT amount of honesty_

Dante had struggled again, eyes wide as he yanked away from his brother, pulse nearly popping out of his neck. He couldn't understand his body's defiant reactions to the other, the odd sensations that trailed beneath his waist when his twin would touch his skin. Nothing made sense and yet, oddly enough, it didn't really matter. They had always had their own world, separate from any other that the dimensions could provide, a world of their making that contained the one rule of no rules. A Godless void where every quick witted insult was answered with another and where judgements were decided by the end of a sword.

Still, every impulse in Dante was at war, some wanting to actually run (which he'd never EVER indulged) and the others wanting to cut Vergil's throat open, drink the falling blood and ravage the incoherent bastard before he could heal up. You could say, it made him uneasy.

" _Sorry_," he'd replied, smirking wildly "_you're not my type._"

"_On the contrary,_Vergil had approached eyes shining "_I think I am._"


	4. Chapter 4

The blunt side of Yamato suddenly struck across Dante's head wickedly, consciousness leaving him for all of thirty seconds, rendering him prone across the concrete, rain pouring over him. The quick shink of metal, and the weight of his two hidden knives leaving the strap of his thigh, tore his eyelids open, shrieking pain causing his entire body to convulse upwards. Vergil pinned the knives into his forearms, the metal crying out as it was pitched into the sheath of cement, buried deep.

Straddling his heaving brother, Vergil's smirk was wrenched across gorgeous features, eyes beaming with malice.

His fingers traced Dante's exposed torso, the younger's eyes darting nervously upwards at the seductive touch of his older twin, slight fear tracing his contours.

"Your soul," Vergil breathed, leaning down to whisper into his brother's ear, lips dangerously near to the curved shell. "it calls to me."

Both palms planted themselves over the panting chest, hot skin soaked by the rapidly falling rain.

"So beautiful Dante," Vergil purred plastering his body against the other, laughing at the sheer tenseness that fell over the younger at this close range. "Your soul, it sparkles you know."

His eyes gleamed, fingers falling over the the younger's chest, feeling the thunderous beating beneath.

"I could hold your heart in the palm of my hand," he whispered, sliding his nose over Dante's cheek. "And still your soul would will it to beat."

Without another word, Dante's cry wretched itself from his body, back thrown from the concrete as he nearly vomited--his twin's fingers breaking through flesh, tissue and bone, reaching beneath his rib cage to cradle the furiously beating organ in his hand.

Dante screamed so hard his voice felt raw, blood bursting from his lips and pooling over his face and eyes; Vergil's fingertips coiling around his heart.

"And I do, don't I my little brother?" Vergil laughed cruelly, watching with delight as his twin writhed and convulsed in agony. "I hold your heart wherever I go, don't I Dante?"

The younger's face was pale with blood loss, the modern, morbid art for his brother to twist into something beautiful. Vergil rested his face against his twin's, tilting their lips closer. He sighed tiredly, relenting his wretched hold on the younger's heart, feeling as though the organ itself gasped in relief, shuddering as it pumped once more, unhindered by cruel fingertips.

"I love you, you know," Vergil whispered like a secret, listening to the cackling as Dante's infuriated blood began to heal his wound. "Like two halves to one incomplete monster, never entirely anything but never truly empty as well."

Dante's brows had furrowed in fury, skin and bone clanking back together as he slowly gripped his sword, brother be damned in the wake of his rage. Still, Vergil continued on, oblivious to the miraculous healing and silent animosity of his other half, sighing once more as though the world rested over them.

"I love you," He'd lied, the weight like a thousand lies. "I just love you."

It brought Dante back for a moment, the thought of love, the thought that excruciatingly reminded him of Lady. How funny that the connotations of love and anything there after always brought him to thoughts of her, the being that probably fought the idea itself more than she'd ever fought so hard against anything in her life.

"Love," She'd told him not long ago, "is a two edged sword, one side graciously stronger than the other."

She had walked with him, amongst the ghettos and economically forgotten sides of town, showing him the worst of the worst as even his devil side had failed to see it. She'd pointed towards an elderly beggar man, crying out chaotically in the fumes of a schizophrenic outbreak, asking change of anyone that would tolerate him enough to provide so.

"You see him?" She had gestured. "You will never be him Dante. You will never grow old, you will never beg and you will never be seen as lingering and worthless. That is your gift, and perhaps, your curse."

She looked at him levelly, her eyes telling so many more years than she had purchased along the way, wisdom peering out from between mutli-colored irises.

"You will look back at your years," she whispered, "and you will miss them from a face that will betray nothing of the ages you've witnessed. But don't mourn them as we do. Don't look back in bitterness in what you've lost but in thankfulness that you experienced it at all. Don't see years of loving someone as though you wasted those moments, latching on to that which was vulnerable in time. Be grateful, rather, that you were given the heart enough, the days enough to love someone as some haven't. We can't all love those given us, even when obligation wills it so."

Her face had become hard, her father no doubt lingering in her ever turning mind.

"Love who and what you can Dante," She'd told him, unable to meet his gaze as she walked on, uncharacteristically giving into her human self. "Love what will be loved, however available it is. It is a gift, though two edged, to be afforded such. Even when heritage asks it so, sometimes the people we give our heart to the most, are the worst ones to surrender it. Love though and don't be angered when time steals them. Remember that you should be grateful that your heart gives you enough to cherish them."

He'd asked her sometime later, what it had been like to be with her father, to kill someone she had obviously felt so close to.

"It's hard," she told him honestly. "It's hard to accept that I loved him, that I lived for him. That for some moments in my life, I lived for just that look, just that moment when he would have loved me back, when he would have said straight out, "Mary my dear, you've made me damn proud". Sometimes, I think I imagined in moments of fanatical insanity that he WAS proud, that for one fucking second, he'd seen me as the man, the woman, the whatever he'd intended during conception with my mother, that I'd been. The worst love of all--- if I know nothing of love itself--- is the one-sided kind. The kind that leaves you constantly begging for more, for seeing something in the eyes of a monster that makes you falsely believe you're more than just an obligation; a thing.

"Maybe I loved my father too much; unnaturally so in that I lost myself to it. He controlled me in so many ways, made me forget myself in the moments I would pathetically pretend I was enthralled with his scientific ideas; in the moments I would pretend to know just what the hell he was talking about, going on and on about his experiments and the outcomes thereof.

"He hit me a lot. I guess I ... I hate saying it. I hate saying I come from an abusive family, the core of some sadistic "daddy's girl" the outcome of a young girl that hates her father and becomes the all too predictable bitch that slays the world of man in her vengeance for not being treated like a Beverly Hills 90210 teenager. I hate being psychologically figured, I hate being the mental experiment based on "nature versus nurture". I don't know what I am. I still don't know how I feel about my father, despite the outcome of the Temin-ni-gru. I know only that I fell in love, perhaps sickly so, and more cliche so, with someone that didn't love me back. And the cruelest nature of such, was that it only made me love him more. But do I regret that... maybe no."

He'd looked at her, mouth tight as he considered it.

"What was it like to kill him Lady?" he'd asked, against the more socially acceptable retorts.

"You mean, did it kill me?" She'd smiled cruelly. "No. Does the family of a comatose victim mourn so harshly when they pull the plug to someone that lives as a vegetable? I don't know. I know only that the day my father hit me, the very first time, I think that day, the man I originally knew died two days before hand. I don't know now what it takes inside a person to hurt a child, what makes them or what's missing inside that allows them to beat a weaker thing until it screams, until it cries. I don't know what makes a pedophile, what makes a man rape a woman he doesn't know, I don't know what makes a serial killer... I just know that when I looked into his eyes, REALLY, looked into his eyes, as much as I wanted to see so much there, as much as I probably IMAGINED so much to be there, I just saw emptiness.

"When I pulled the trigger? I think I cried for the first time in forever, really cried because I wasn't sorry. I think I wanted to be sorry, I wanted to mourn, I wanted to hate myself so surely for doing what I had. But I really think the cruelest part was that I couldn't mourn, I couldn't care. Like putting an animal out of its misery, I laid to waste the shell of my father's body, the monster behind the angelic mask, the charade that had become his life. Sometimes I think, ..." Her teeth grit. "Sometimes I think the greatest kindness we can give, Dante, is the understanding that somedays, we have to set someone free. Even if in all the world, we can't love anyone else more. My father once told me that the most beautiful flower of all, is the one that has never been picked, never been taken from its roots to lay between the fingers of a human; instead, it lives, it blooms, and it dies because someone wills it so. Because someone loved it more, loved it enough to set it free."

When Vergil had slid inside of him, gasps catching inside his body as he was pummeled almost violently, he could remember gazing into the rain, letting it fall painfully into his eyes; the veritible masochist in every way, begging for whatever cruel attention was available: he scoffed, like some sort of attention crazed dog. And he had felt it, even in the moment he was supposedly being "loved" by Vergil, that there was more than this. That there was something missing, something in the way of detachment he saw in his brother's eyes. Was his soul forever searching, lost and pathetic on a trivial pursuit of something that didn't exist? Was he asking too much for that 'something' that existed only in childhood fairy tales, only in the sociological expectancies of human nature? Was he asking too much for the idea of true love?

In Vergil, he lost himself. He always lost himself. He saw beauty, as it was told in Michelangelo paintings, in the faces of Botticelli angels, the imploring eyes that sparked with something his own could never reflect. He lost his humanity, when Vergil planted both hands on either side of his head, fingernails turning cement into paste beneath the clouded stars, wanting to surrender everything his father had treasured. Forsaking the social acceptances of the human race and indulging in what would be considered monstrous, unnaturally loving that which was said to never love.

God, ... God how he lost himself.

When Vergil had impaled his body over Dante, eyes gleaming with a sort of magic, a sort of horror that would make blood run like glacier water, he had only wanted more of it. More of the isolation from everything and everyone that suddenly beamed so petty.

"Love this," Vergil had told him, pumping viciously over his cock, smile so animalistic it couldn't have been conceived as human. "Love me."

But that wasn't love.

Dante's hand had gone upwards before he'd even acknowledge that he wanted it to move, tearing the short blade from the cement and digging into his brother's face in one rapid movement. The knife soared like heated metal through butter, flying through the soft under-skin of Vergil's chin. A choked gasp and a gurgle came, followed by dark blood spraying through the older twin's teeth. Dante could feel that the tip of the blade was buried deep in the roof of Vergil's mouth, dug to the hilt against creamy flesh.

Still a rotten smile crossed the mirror-like features of his brother's face, the older twin bending down, pushing his mouth against Dante's and filling it with blood. Tongues collided painfully, both swallowing crimson as flesh caught and was torn in the still buried knife in Vergil's mouth. Dante's eyes rolled back as the older once more began to move over him, head thrown back and gothic streams of blood tracing the beautiful exposed throat.

Sick as he was, much as he detested the prone position, (the ultimate control the other had over him in damn near everything), Dante's body swam with the feeling of liquid beauty, soaring to extents of sexual arousal he'd never known existed. His fingertips felt as though they sparkled with an inner power, like he could heal the world with this immense strength his twin radiated. His back began to arch upwards, his own throat exposed to Vergil's fangs and claws, the older taking advantage of such by clamping sharp teeth over the jugular vein and tearing sideways.

Fingertips buried deep in white hair, Dante doing the very thing he'd never in a thousand years expected he would: encouraging evil. He yanked Vergil's head up viciously, holding his hair tightly before kissing him, loving the cruelty of the blade as they both went over the edge of a precipice they'd never seen the top of. The fire of the orgasm

poisoned his mind with a thousand scenarios; a thousand insane possibilities.

The sheer magic of it tainted every resolve, every promise he'd ever made, wanting him to be this way with Vergil forever. Wanting him to willingly follow his brother on whatever path the other chose, be it good or evil.

'Take me with you,' his body had sang out to Vergil, arms coiling around the other. 'Anywhere, everywhere.'

But then it had ended. All of it.

Moments after the explosion that sent him into a wave of euphoria, Dante's thoughts awoke him, sickness welling within as he realized all that had nearly been lost. Every promise he'd made to himself, every whispered vow of vengeance at his mother's grave, he'd spit on it for a momentary bit of pleasure.

Vergil had merely stood, dressing himself as though they'd endured nothing more than any other training match, buckling his pants without even a glance to the other that still sat cross-legged on the ground, gazing up. Wrenching the blade from beneath his chin with a sickening grimace, he smirked for but a second, hurling the blood-soaked knife towards his brother, the force pinning through Dante's shoulder and sending him once more on his back.

By the time he'd managed to push himself upwards, Vergil had left, gone as though he'd never really existed. And Dante could only think, that for all his insisting that he would never leave, never be gone, Vergil, in a sense, had never been there at all.

Another memory plagued his thoughts, Dante's tired eyes gazing through the dirt covered window. He'd been sent to jail about a year after the first 'excursion' with Vergil, having gotten so entirely drunk in a local drinking establishment that it had taken less than twenty police officers to subdue him. Awakening, he hadn't even realized where he was, the alcohol simmering as memory returned. Rage, hatred, detachment and the ever constant isolation from everything. The bars had swirled around his vision, cruel fluorescent light pelting through his split eyelids.

"Ahhhh Dante," Came Vergil's voice, the light more thrashing as his eyelids flew apart, his head trying to pry its way from the floor. Vergil towered over him, his intimidating near 7 feet making him seem as tall as a building, cold blue eyes staring in mock-pity. "how foolishly you attempt to be one of them. Drinking in their caverns, sulking away your pathetic existence as though you're nothing more than a man."

He gazed around in disgust, silver iris's taking in the claustrophobic surroundings of the jail cell.

"You even allow them to contain you," He spat in repulsion, face blazing with something akin to controlled rage. "To cage your spirit. To confine that which is unfathomably more powerful than they are. You should be walking this earth as their God, yet here you lie." He sent a cruel kick to his brother's ribs, Dante's head jerking back from the force. "the human's little pet."

Dante's eyes fell to the floor, remembering the harshness of being pressed so suddenly into metal bars, the cold metal colliding over and over against his face while Vergil fucked him mercilessly from behind.

"Yeah," He actually said aloud to the emptiness, to the abandoned hell that had once been his home. "Yeah Vergil. You set me free."

And even as he spoke it, he knew it was a lie. For every human bar that had at one time held his body from the world, for every fingerprint he'd stamped in ink, Vergil's web of enigmatic lies caged him far more than anything the world had ever produced.

And that? That wasn't love.

**_Hey! I wanted to thank everyone who reviewed and who read. Comments are always helpful and it means a lot that people would take their time to supply me with the much needed encouragement to continue. Thank you so SOOOO much and I hope you enjoyed this installment. Till next time!_**

**_Chrome _**


	5. Chapter 5

She felt stupid.

No. No she really did. Lady sat on the greasy bench of a subway car, the loud blaring of rusty tracks doing nothing to quell her anxiety at the night's activities. Everything had gone wrong. Of course, nothing had really gone right for some time either.

Her eyes closed as she willed away the embarrassment and shame. She felt dirty and stupid. Like a whore, just as he'd said. The bastard. Why was evil always given the face of angels? Why did beauty make you question what you already knew?

Her hands clasped tightly as the car lurched sideways, a filthy old beggar woman across from her remarking something about the subway moving too fast. But then everything felt too fast these days. Chaotic really. Like she was forever being pulled behind a train, trying to keep her legs moving so as not to simply be yanked violently across the ground. But she could never catch up. Never.

She felt more human than ever, seeing Dante's eyes in her mind, the flash of sadistic detachment that immediately made him seem no better than his brother. She could do this alone, she knew that. She'd never been the type to rely on benevolent efforts of others and knew well enough that loneliness in her line of work was as much a part of it as anything else. Still, she missed him.

It seemed at one time, that in all the vastness of the world, he was the only one who understood her. They would walk for hours, patrolling for the big bads, and sometimes just losing each other in their own grief. She could speak about her father to him. The rest of the world could perceive her as being immaculately conceived for all she cared. But Dante knew the truth as no one else did.

One day he had finally asked her, and she knew well enough that it had been a long time coming, if her father had ever sexually abused her.

"My father loved me." was all she'd answered. "My father always loved me."

And he had. He had loved her very much when she'd knelt before him, seeing a tiny necklace dangle in his fingers before her face went into his lap. The bastard. The worst sexual abuse ever, in her mind, was the kind the victim learned to like. And she had. She'd liked it when her father had touched her, even in places he really shouldn't have. And that's why she hated herself. Because she hadn't known well enough to hate it.

The subway was a rank means of travel and she knew it, resting her chin against her palms as they journeyed on, the car blissfully empty save for the old woman who seemed content to simply stare at Lady. She rolled her eyes, mumbling something unintelligible under her breath as they moved through the darkest tunnel.

'Oh great,' Lady thought to herself dismally. 'The lights are out again.'

Her eyes squinted though, when even the dim, dank lights of the car began to flicker, the old woman managing to tear her gaze away long enough to notice the same.

"Damn city," the beggar growled. "This whole fucking place has gone to- "

Salt sprayed into Lady's eyes only a second after the woman had been cut off, the entire train going pitch black dark.

"Shit!" Lady cried, furiously trying get the hot liquid out of her face and eyes. Panic gripped her as her fingers came away stained with whatever had splattered against her, the lights flickering only enough to reveal them as completely red with blood and clots. Her hands shook as she stared in them, pleading that a thousand horror filled nights had left her crazy and paranoid.

"Oh my God," she whispered, lips trembling as she searched the darkness of the train, lids pulled back from her eyes as far as they would go. Trembling fingers touched the plastic blue of her seat, legs wobbling as she gribbed a metal bar and hoisted herself into standing.

"Where..." She swallowed. "Where are you lady?"

But no one answered.

She stumbled as the car shifted violently around a corner. She swallowed again, mentally berating herself for this cowardice before gripping the handle of her pistol and yanking it from her holster. A spark of electricity calmed her for a second, the shape of the old woman, still staring shamelessly at her, coming into view. Dry, old hair crinkled around her dirty face, eyes wide and eerie.

"You uhh...gave me quite a scare." Lady stammered, absolutely hating her complete inability to properly communicate with other humans. "Are you bleeding or something? Ya hurt?"

The old lady answered only by shutting her mouth, her head lopping right off her shoulders and splattering on the floor. Lady bit down the scream that weld in her throat, stepping backwards when blood and flesh burst towards her boots from the bloody stump of a neck that soon after met the ground. Hot breath came against the back of her neck, the tiny hairs rising.

With impeccable speed, she'd wrenched her twin gun out of the holster, pointing both towards either side of the car. She could feel whatever it was, breathing all around her, her skin crawling with the sensation.

"Come... come out where I can see you." She commanded, rolling her eyes at how positively cliche and movie-like that sounded.

"Come out, come out wherever you are." A voice came, sounding EXACTLY like hers!

She dove towards the back of the car, planting her shoulders against the rear window as she aimed at the rest of the train. Cruel, patronizing laughter filled the silence, shadows growing on opposite sides from one another, near the windows. They continued to grow from the floor up, nearly ten man-sized shadows lurching upwards.

"Mary." one of them whispered, nearer to her than she had thought. "Mary."

"S-stay back!" she ordered, firing at the shadow. The bullet went straight through the steam-like blackness, ricocheting off metal.

"Mary..." The shadows whispered longer this time, absorbing every syllable. She actually swore aloud when she noticed the quivering of her gun.

"No." The shadows suddenly spat, crawling towards her. She backed away in panic, cursing when she could go no further and her head met the rear window entirely. "Not Mary."

The metal of her guns rattled together as she held them side by side, pointing towards the floor as the shadows slowly merged together. Her teeth clenched together as the huge shadow rose from the ground, black as tar and twice as thick, rising to the size of nearly 7 feet. It loomed over her, moving even closer as she inched every last piece of her skin away from it.

"Not Mary." One voice came from the shadow, familiar.

She gazed in horror as the shadow began to take form, pale fingers seeming to reach out of the blackness, white skin and expensive clothing absorbing the liquid-like smog. The lips and throat soon became visible and Lady gasped in terror, nearly dropping her guns in the process. Clear, silvery blue eyes seemed to smile at her despite their cruelness, the perfect mouth following their lead.

"Lady." Vergil whispered in his cold, silky voice.

"Vergil," Lady smiled sweetly. "And here I was so afraid you were dead."

With a battle cry she was on him, her legs wrapped around his waist as she fired into his smug smile, literally shoving the barrel of her pistol into his mouth and blowing holy hell right through him. Seemingly caught off guard, Vergil hurled her through the air, her back scrapping against the roof of the car as she continued firing. She landed painfully on her ankle, figuring it was a nasty spring as she knelt, reloading before continuing her assault.

Vergil had yet to retaliate, focusing on healing his damaged face. Lady knew well enough it was his style to feel out an opponent, to let them work out all frustrations before he ultimately finished it. That was fine with her. Really. It would be a decent death if it meant wiping a smile off the pretty boy's face.

The subway suddenly lurched to a stop, lights flickering as the door came open, Lady instantly rolling out of it and facing towards the sliding door frame before unleashing another barrage of bullets. Vergil flew out of the train, the mass of her fire sinking into his chest before the quick flash of his blade sent them ricocheting around the station. Lady dove to the side to avoid being hit, rolling behind a large cement pillar as she reloaded once more.

"Now now," he was laughing in his aristocratic voice. "is that any way for a lady to behave?"

She rolled her eyes. Cliche enough. Dante probably said that on a daily basis.

She lunged from her hiding place, firing at him once more. His hands were on her instantaneously, her body flung towards a bench, her side and right thigh feeling crushed against the metal bars as the force literally pulled the chair from the concrete ground. She heard the skitter of her guns clacking across the cement surface, sliding away from her. Lady's teeth grit in her mouth as she struggled to at least get to her hands and knees, her thigh and ankle throbbing from abuse.

She felt a hiss of air filter through her teeth as her hair was yanked backwards, her bare knees scrapping the rough ground as he positioned himself behind her.

"Ohh Mary," he sighed against her face, listening to her harsh breathing. "You know I hate to hurt you. Though I do know how you love it when I pull your hair."

For emphasis he gave it a vicious tug, earning a gasp and a grinding of her teeth. He pushed his pelvis against her backside, smirk winding its way through his features when she caught her breath, obviously sensing just how much he adored the sight of her fighting against him.

"This isn't how I wanted our reunion to go," He sighed honestly, letting his fingers glide over her exposed throat and collarbone. He felt another hitch in her breath and probably against her will, her backside rubbed against him, lifting slightly. His teeth glittered in the shadowy room, his fingers dipping beneath her shirt to touch the heat hiding behind her bra.

"What did you.." She stammered. "What did you want to happen?"

"Oh I think you know," he grinned, sliding his other hand along her thigh. "Perhaps a welcome back kiss?"

"Oh." She whispered sexually, her tiny fingers inching in front of her. "Well how about you kiss THIS!"

In a second flat she'd ripped out a thick metal pole --loosely protruding from the ground-- spun herself onto her back and delivered a bone crunching swing to the side of Vergil's head. The force was enough to send him flying away from her, Lady's body groaning as she scrambled to obtain her weapons. Vergil's impressive speed was put to the test as he came at her, yamato smashing against the thick metal pole she held tightly in her hands.

"You were always good." Vergil smiled approvingly, humoring her.

"I'm even better now." She smirked in a cocky tone.

She hurled the pole towards him, the two metals clashing with sparks as he held her off, a patient look on his beautiful face. They twisted this way and that, Vergil climbing up walls to avoid her violent attacks, wall tile bursting into the air when she'd miss. Gracefully he'd float down, matching her every move, taunting her efforts. Teeth ground in her mouth when she suddenly missed, the tip of his blade against her spine as he dove behind her.

"Gotcha." His voice came. "Turn around."

She slowly dropped the metal bat, the clank deafening as she maneuvered her body around, the tip of yamato purposefully sliding over her chest.

"I have you right where I want you," He breathed through full lips, eyes staring intently into hers. "Surrender to me."

Very slowly, inch by inch, she smiled at him, the sound of guns cocking making him glance downwards.

"Never." She breathed sexually, both barrels of her guns pointed directly at his cock.

They stared at each other in this stalemate, his blade against her heart, her guns against his pants. His smile had faded, his mind no doubt weighing the options. Every part of a Sparda could grow back if the heart continued to beat, that was true enough. Still, his eyes lingered towards the precious target at stake, lips going to the side in a frustrated expression.

The seconds ticked before he ultimately made his decision, lowering his blade for the moment. As if following his lead, Lady raised her guns, positioning them to fire at his chest if need be. The long stare continued, her eyes searching every feature of his face, so like that of Dante's yet somehow so miraculously different. The face she'd stared at when such a young girl, hours wasted in such a time that now seemed lifetimes ago. She'd probably written his stupid name a thousand times in her diary when younger, first filled with such an idea of pure youthful fantasy and then later replaced with absolute hatred.

"Why'd you come back?" She shook her head, willing away emotion.

"You missed me." He stated simply.

"I mourned you." She nodded. "I grieved when I knew you'd fallen, when I felt you go. But that process is over. Why are you here?"

"I saw you," He ignored her question. "I saw you fall to the floor when you felt me die. I saw your tears Mary. Every single one of them."

Lady snarled inside at this comment, recalling the sensation of pain and emptiness, so great she had known his presence had left the world. Like feeling the sun wouldn't shine ever again, or that the stars in the sky had been burned out.

"You wouldn't know anything about tears," She glared at him, inching backwards.

"I saw you fall," He said again, moving towards her despite her attempt to put distance between them. "And some how, I don't think you've ever gotten up again."

"You don't know me anymore," She growled, turning away from him.

"Do we change so dramatically Mary?" His smooth voice came closely behind her, his hands going across her stomach sensually. "I knew you more than anyone else in the world long ago. You were mine entirely. Or don't you remember?"

His lips went against her shoulder, hands sliding down her arms before capturing her palms. He lifted her hands, positioning them on her body and forcing them to roam wherever he chose. She moaned almost sorrowfully as he pulled her onto his lap on the floor.

"Even your precious daddy never knew you, did he?" He laughed cruelly, fingers sliding beneath her shirt. "Never knew what his darling daughter did, all alone in her room, thinking of me. Never knew the creamy liquid on her fingers was all because of me. You were his before you were ever mine Mary, but you gave yourself to me willingly, you know that. I never made you love me."

She struggled to hold back emotion, biting her lips and turning her head shamefully as he touched her bare breast, the clasp of her bra coming undone beneath her shirt. He fondled her painfully, squeezing the hot, full flesh, tugging hard on her nipples.

"Ohhh but if only daddy had known," He smiled. "Do you remember? Do you remember that night how I found you? Your legs were spread so far, just like this," his hands slowly forced her thighs apart, the cool air shocking against her already moist panties. "Your fingers were so deep inside yourself, back arching as you said my name. You just said it. Said it like you were right out of a movie. So sad your daddy never knew."

His hands slid down, both on the insides of her thighs.

"His plan WOULD have worked you know," He breathed. "His beautiful priestess daughter, the blood of the sparda twins. It was really perfect. Ingenious in fact. If only he had known that his precious priestess wasn't a virgin, that the purity of her blood soiled his plot. He would have taken the form of the mighty Sparda himself. Instead, you left him in nothing more than a tainted, awkward, useless blob of uncontrollable power. You really did get your vengeance Mary."

"Stop it." She whispered, wincing when his fingers came so close, fingering the lace of her panties.

"Why?" She could feel his smile as he kissed her throat, his sharp teeth leaving tiny red trails. His finger slowly crept beneath her underwear, feeling the soaking wet lips of her vagina. "It could be like old times. You used to love this remember?"

Two fingers slid inside of her, pushing deeply upwards as she moaned out, his other hand squeezing her right breast so painfully she wanted to scream.

Suddenly he stopped, the fingers still buried deeply in her, his lips no longer on her throat but lingering.

"Someone else has been inside you." He stated coldly, eyes staring straight forward.

The catch in her breathing had said enough, the scent of her wet sex, mingled with another's, taunting his nostrils.

"So," He said in a hateful voice. "how is my brother?"


	6. Chapter 6

**_A/N: Hey guys, I just wanted to take a moment and thank you so much for all the encouraging feedback. At first I wasn't really sure anyone liked this but it has just been SO inspiring to see that others enjoy reading as much as I have enjoyed writing. How awesome! Thank you VERY VERY much! _**

Vergil pushed her away, eyes hiding anything he may or may not have been feeling. His face was masked with slight indifference, ruined only a tad by the twinge of disgust he was apparently trying to conceal.

"You've been with him," He stated flatly, standing up. He towered over her, the feeling of inferiority causing her to immediately climb to her feet, (albeit wobbly).

"I don't think that's any of your concern," she snapped. "seens how you're dead."

He turned away, his erratic actions betraying the rage obviously looming inside.

He would glance at her from the corner of his eye, pacing like a once-freed animal caged behind bars again. It would seem he was studying her, tracing the lines of a face he once thought he knew so fucking well. Sooooooo fucking well.

"You care about him," He spat finally, like it made him ill just to keep the words prisoner in his mouth. "don't you..."

Lady smiled slightly, enjoying the momentary prediction she had from reading his body language.

"You care either way?" She crossed her arms, raising an eyebrow.

"What we had must have been so fickle," He raised one back, his tongue going into his cheek irritably. "What was that Shakespearian saying... 'the funeral bak'd meats did coldly furnish forth the **marriage** tables'. .."

He spat on the floor, crunching his heel into the pavement.

"Dear Lady," he whispered in a devilish voice, eyes low beneath his brows as he glowered at her. "Our bed wasn't even cold before you dove clit first into another one."

"Oh and what DID we have Vergil?!" She tapped her foot rapidly. "What great feverish love affair did we have besides my momentary lapse into the fucking ABYSS of stupidity!"

A cold silence swept around them, the only sound that of the rushing wind from the subway tunnels. Lady glanced around her surroundings, the ugly gray stains of tile, the broken cement and shattered benches. The station lay in the worst of ghettos, the fluorescent lights above beginning to flicker, threatening to go out as Vergil's temper fluctuated.

He turned his back to her finally, the broad shoulders solid as he gazed away, staring only at memories that came and went in his mind.

"Do you love him?" He whispered.

Lady grit her teeth, wanting a lifetime to answer that question; wanting the grinding of her teeth to be the worst of her problems.

"I don't know." She answered honestly.

"You loved me you know," he sighed, oddly enough sounding slightly perturbed. "once upon time... "

"I loved what I thought I saw in you..." Lady swallowed. And yes, she had. How many times? How many FUCKING times had she studied the curves of his mouth as he'd slept, wondering in her mind, 'gee, what day will it be when that mouth finally says something of merit? What day will he finally admit to giving a shit about me?' But it hadn't. It really never had.

She'd watched it for a hundred nights it seemed. Watched that mouth whisper filthy words as it slid over the most private parts of her. Watched that mouth pant above her own, letting loose disgusting scenarios he would later enact upon her. But never once, never once did it say a single word she really wanted to hear. It just wouldn't. Somedays, she'd make herself feel better by considering that, maybe, those perfect lips just were incapable of telling her what she needed them to speak. But the truth was, Vergil didn't feel the need to lie. So she'd watched those lips say goodbye, which at the time, was the very last thing she'd wanted them to say.

"I loved you," She finally whispered, catching her bottom lip trying to quiver. "I loved what you promised me."

"I never made any sort of promises Lady. That's what you always adored.." He smiled cruelly. "that I would never really be yours. I was the unattainable and that was the appeal. Any ideas born from that were the silly fabrications of a young, horny little girl. I never promised or said anything that would make you believe-"

"You didn't have to say it Vergil," She told him. "I knew you'd never say anything I wanted you to. But I would have gone to the bottom of hell if I thought it would compel a single WORD of affection. I would have given you my soul, a devil incarnate, if I thought it would make you see me as something more than an object, a dead body. God," She looked up, hating the slight tremble in her voice. "I was such a stupid STUPID girl."

She breathed in hard, unable to look at him.

"I was so stupid," She swallowed hard, pushing her palm beneath her eye. "But I just can't anymore. I can't cry for you again Vergil! I can't look in your face and see a thousand unspoken words that I'm NEVER going to hear. I can't look in your eyes and see promises you can NEVER give me. I gave you my last tears when you left and hell, I would have fallen with you if you had just asked. But whatever did go, took the part that loved you too. And that's just gone now."

She took a step towards him, hardening herself once more.

"You don't feel Vergil." She stated. "You can't feel. And I'm exhausted trying to pretend that you ever did."

She sighed, closing her eyes against any tears that might have come had she been less of a person than she was. It was like the words had lived as long as she had, buried so deep inside, shielded and covered in concrete. It was like she was saying goodbye all over again. Goodbye to Vergil, goodbye to Mary, goodbye to whoever that young girl had been that had spent so many hours daydreaming about him.

"You know you were my hero once," She smiled sadly. "You were the one who saved me in my dreams Vergil. You always saved me."

She'd spent so many hours, so many... sitting in corners, nursing her bruised skin, tracing her fingertips over jagged rips in her flesh. 'So many scars Mary,' he'd once told her. 'So many scars.' She'd always imagined him, one day, catching her father's hand before it melted against her cheek. Or maybe, maybe grabbing the belt from dad's hand, raised so high above that ugly bald head. Or perhaps, pulling her up from between her father's knees, grabbing her shoulders and for some reason, hugging her like he wasn't repulsed.

He'd always been her hero, one way or another.

Yeah...Mary, the pretty princess locked up high in a tower.

Once upon a time...

In a kingdom so far, far away...


	7. Chapter 7

"So where have you been Vergil?" She had to ask. 

"Never too far Mary," he sighed.

"Never too close either." She ended.

He turned, looking at her. She seemed entirely in her element, the broken girl-scout, surrounded by her cherished, broken city. Newspapers scattered along the ground, the breath of the underground tunnels pushing them erratically along. Cold wind from the upper city scratched along his skin, teeth clenching at the awful sound of screeching; the rusted tracks being rapped by old subway cars.

The place was awful, he decided, the exalted "upper world" of earth paling in comparison to hell, his home. At least things down there weren't so fucking sugar-coated; white and sparkling while rotting inside. There were no uses for lies or deceit in the other world, merely the occasional tricks of devils to fool the all-too-naïve humans.

But devils never lied. Devils never said that they loved. Devils never fell because of poisonous emotions.

Pathetic really.

Yet he had only to look at her and hate the fact that she was human. It was always the strange curse with Vergil, the fact that she had a heart and the fact that he loved to break it. Sure, it was true. Everyone knew that she had loved him, loved him far too deeply for one her age. And yes, it was exactly as she had said it; he knew precisely what she wanted, what she figured she deserved. And no, he had no intention of ever giving it to her.

Mary, Lady: a game.

At first, it was genuine intrigue, that someone of her age, someone so human and tender could so forcefully defile herself in the confines of a bedroom. He had merely gone inside out of curiosity, wondering if one of Arkham's horrid experiments had crept into Mary's bedroom and was the culprit of the strange sounds he heard coming from the other side of the door.

What he'd seen had left its own mark, his eyes gleaming and a smile stretching over his stoic features. He watched her, unapologetically, eyes beaming like slanted, cruel moons in the shadows as she did it. Sweat beaded on her bare stomach, dripping down the sides, smeared by the ministrations of her fingers. She writhed, and how he loved the word now, her tiny heels seeming to claw at the sheets beneath them.

Writhe. His favorite human word.

He even let his imagination get the better of him, watching intently as she would bend forward and then throw herself back, her legs spread so wide as she seemed to plead for it. For him. For the dark bastard to creep from the shadows and plunge inside of her, filling her restless need.

And then she said it. Just fucking said it.

"Vergil."

He stood absolutely still, shocked that she could have seen him, that his hiding place had betrayed him and instead left him the peeping-tom that he most assuredly was. But she hadn't seen him.

"Vergil….." She had breathed, the insides of her body clenching around the word, around her fingers buried so deeply within. "God…. Vergil…."

Sleep had soon come to her, her pretty, petite little body still bare to the blue moonlight that beamed through her window. She was like a perfect doll, naked and tossed over a canopy bed, pretty arms resting lazily alongside her exhausted body. Legs still spread as if she waited for it, for him.

Things had been good from then on.

It had become a strange game, to see how far he could tease her, to embarrass her, without letting on that he'd seen. 

At dinner time he would do ridiculous things, her father's overwhelmed mind too distracted to ever catch on.

"Hm…." He would quirk an eyebrow. "melted butter. Nothing quite like it Mary. How it spreads and melts all over your fingertips. Hmm…" He closed his eyes dreamily. "Creamy isn't it?"

At first she stared at him like a maniac, every semi-sexual remark seeming totally off-put and inexplicable. And despite common belief, Vergil DID have a sense of humor; albeit blasphemous and most of the time at the expense of other people. He took weird delight in throwing off-the-wall words into every day sentences, often grumbling about her father "fingering" him when experiments went wrong or insisting the man was simply "masturbating" in Vergil's absence.

So it became the weird, unspoken secret between them and Vergil couldn't have been happier about it.

He would watch her, in his own devil-may-give-two-shits way, seeing her eyes lock on him across the dinner table. As he would walk nonchalantly through the mansion, he would sometimes feel her eyes upon his back, probably against her own will, wondering what must be going on in the mind of her father's supposed pupil.

In a way, despite his ties to Dante, if one could say Vergil had essentially "grown-up" with anyone, it would have been Lady. But again, the darker son did nothing without an ulterior motive and what might have at times been perceived to be benevolence was usually just a tool to achieve what he truly wanted.

He smiled in the moments of nostalgia, remembering how her skin had never looked so fresh, her eyes so beaming and her body clad so gorgeously in a golden dress, the eve of one of her father's fundraiser banquets. Young, wealthy men had come from far and wide, each one money hungry suckers for the daughter of the world renowned scientist.

It still astounded Vergil, looking at her now, that Mary was always the last one to think of herself as anything but ordinary, her face covered in surprise when one after another, men asked her to dance. It almost made her that much prettier, her complete obliviousness to the fact that she was beautiful.

And never had she looked more so than when the golden lightening from the ballroom shown into her eyes, the contrasting colors so vibrant as she swirled in the dance.

Dancing.

An odd human ritual he'd decided.

Yet her eyes always came to him, as he watched, ignoring the countless conversations directed at him. 'Yes Mary,' He would think. 'Believe it. Believe I love you. Believe I want you. Say my name one more time angel.'

And though one would be hard-pressed to believe it, it was actually Vergil who had taught Mary how to ride a motorcycle. He had taken the time to physically catch her unawares, studying the odd little quirks of a human woman. Yet it seemed that as she walked amongst the confines of her little castle, that truly, nothing was hers. Life coursed through her veins when banquets were held and people BESIDE Vergil and her father inhabited their tiny little world. Yet when the last guest's footsteps trotted through the closing door, it became, once more, her prison.

So he began to rescue her.

He would leave little notes beneath her pillow, telling her to meet him in unused corridors of the house. The first time had really been an experiment, a test to see if courage alone would will her to indeed meet him in the south wing of the mansion. Sure enough, she'd come, fire in her eyes as she demanded to know precisely why he'd been in her bedroom in the first place and secondly, why the hell was she meeting him at such a crude hour of the night.

He'd never even answered her, simply walking away, knowing she would follow. She even came willingly, as he coldly wrapped her in his arms, gracefully falling from a high window and soaring towards the ground. Yet she refused to hold on any tighter than necessary, teeth grinding as they came to a halt, safely on the shore of an ocean he doubted she'd ever even touched.

What she thought of him, he never knew. His freakishly tall figure, porcelain skin, wolfish eyes; the fact that his body had reached full adulthood far too early for one his age. He never knew if it horrified her, when he would let them fall for stories, his feet gracefully colliding with the ground when a normal man's body would have exploded on impact.

He knew only that she would politely look away when he astonished her, when his eyes would glow through the darkness, the inner light of his demon letting them beam like dull flashlights through the murky night. He knew only that she never asked him why he could perform these incredible feats or why she seemed to be the only one he allowed to witness them.

But they'd stayed on the beach, all night, walking without words as she took in the vastness of something she'd read about, yet had only in slight glimpses ever seen (and still then, probably not for many years). The fog that perpetually concealed the house in shadows was gone and moonlight danced merrily on the tumultuous surface of the sea. Boarded windows had never allowed her eyes to see what he had probably shrugged his shoulders to a thousand times, his mind curious as to what he could show her if afforded the time and will to do so.

If he had known then what he knew now, he might have understood why it was so essential that Mary never venture from the house, never come in contact with men, never lose her virginity. He would have known, while he watched her dance, why her father's eyes stared even harder than his own, keeping sure that she would never get too close, never get too comfortable.

Ah, but if the filthy bastard had only known.

Arkham had once left for nearly a week's time, blissfully unaware of Vergil's cruel interest in his daughter, probably counting on the younger man's normal, borderline asexual behavior. Vergil hadn't wasted a moment's time, waking Mary as the sun began to rise, wrenching her from her bed to see it come over the water for the first time. And she had never complained, sitting in silence as she blinked away the tears he couldn't for the life of him understand.

Tears were usually when a human was in pain, at least from what he'd witnessed. Yet here she was, witnessing something most people would have considered beautiful, her hands clasped over her mouth as she breathed into them. Another odd occurrence he'd chalked up to absolute human insanity.

Later he had taken her to a local bike shop, still in awe that the simplest of luxuries (like walking into a town?) seemed to stun her into silent contemplation. She'd gazed at each one, tiny fingertips tracing along the smallest bits of dust, admiring the glazed texture of a good paint-job.

"If you were to pick one, which would it be?" He'd asked cryptically, the first bit of conversation they'd had.

And so she'd beamed, grinning wildly when gesturing towards one. But he'd never seen her eyes so wide, her mouth so lax as when he'd tossed an old credit card at the owner, purchasing the bike at asking price then and there.

It had become their secret time together, the hours they'd spend pushing the bike far enough away from the mansion so as not to be heard, his voice calmly explaining which gear to be in at which speeds, how to pull in the clutch at which times and precisely what NOT to do when riding. She'd hung on every word, hiding her frustration when she'd killed the motor by letting out the clutch too fast, hiding her embarrassment when she didn't ride like an expert the first few times around.

Vergil's patience surprised even him, enjoying these encounters more than he would have liked to. It was the closest thing to a friendship he'd ever known and what was worse than that, it had crept up on him. He'd even laid to the wayside any form of dignity and reluctantly crawled on back of her bike, riding bitch throughout the neighboring counties.

Now as much as one might suppose at this time that perhaps Vergil loved Lady, that would be entirely up for debate. For as much as Vergil was CAPABLE of love, he reserved such an amount soully for his brother and for Mary. Now Dante was a sort of "love" that Vergil had finally felt obligated to accept, knowing that there must have been some tedious connection if he hadn't already obliterated the bastard for choosing a side contrary to Vergil's own.

Yet his affection for Lady was something he'd accepted as truly unavoidable. Vergil wasn't the type to deny emotions; simply, he just didn't understand or even have them usually. He caved though, accepting Mary as just the "itch he couldn't scratch himself".

Except that changed.

Attribute it to age, attribute it to a sort of naïve perception of humans based on lack of interaction, but Vergil had never known a pedophile. Or more, he'd never suspected anything of the sort from Arkham. The man was a single-tracked mind, bent totally on the opening of the Teminigru; nothing more. Yet on the eve of Vergil's supposed 'absence', on the night that the twin had insisted he would be leaving for a few days (and really, was just buying possible time with Mary) the young prince had witnessed something that with all his might, he could never stave off the memory of.

He had sat, lurking in the dark bedroom, preparing to conceal yet another set of directions in her pillow case, listening to the sounds of the shower running when it happened. Arkham had entered, thankfully never turning on the lights as he crept like a spider towards the closed bathroom door. At first Vergil had hidden in the shadows, watching as he expected Mary's father to just belt out some request and leave as was usual.

Instead, Vergil felt a twitch in his upper lip, watching as Arkham's fingertips smoothed down the outside of the door. The man's breathing hitched at times, eyes closing like he was about to devour some delectable meal.

And then he'd walked in; just opened the door, the mist of the shower spray exiting the bathroom as Arkham walked right in. Vergil sat in mild horror, confused and for the life of him feeling as though his time in hell must have left him naïve of human rituals. He had always imagined that humans shunned incest and the idea of a father seeing his daughter in the shower?

He felt sick, oddly sick in a way he hadn't felt before. He didn't become ill, his immune system a fucking machine when it came to healing and attacking viruses. But now, his guts churned, his skin prickling over with goose-bumps as he heard everything.

"Not today dad, please."

"Mary, you know your mother's gone. You know there are certain responsibilities that come from being the woman of the house."


	8. Chapter 8

So that's why it'd happened. That's why he'd wanted her so badly and why he'd eventually fallen a total victim to it. Vergil was never said to be one without control, yet she made him lose it, the day he saw her life as what it was; to be a caged prostitute to her own fucking father.

Now Vergil never pretended to know much about love, about its counteraction with sex or why the two seemed to be linked together in the human world. He never could guess how emotions needed to be any part of reproduction or the practice thereof. Sex was just a unique form of exercise, the occasional need for a mental and physical release of pent up stress. He chalked it up to a very primal human need that his hybrid body occasionally bowed down to.

But as he heard gagging from the other side of the door, his own belly aching with disgust, he understood things a little bit more. As much as sex was used for reproducing, for release, for enjoyment, it could also be a means for torture and for control when one didn't have the right to such.

He understood suddenly how someone could actually hate it.

Vergil had left through her window, his feet upon the ground quicker than he'd anticipated, feeling like he'd just run from something. He felt the oddest sensations, emotions he'd read about in books yet had never been truly able to grasp. Concepts of embarrassment, guilt and overall shame (at obliviousness) came to him in those moments, the sound of the sea unable to calm them.

How had he not known? How had he lived in that house and never seen it for the home of such horrors? How had he looked into her eyes, known such secrets about her, yet never put two and two together?

A young girl, always hidden from the world, yet somehow well versed in the ideas of sex. He should have known.

Later he'd gone once more into her room, knowing that Arkham had retired to bed, sexually sated from his own daughter. It made Vergil want to hurl. Yet his disgust didn't stem from her, didn't make him see her as a monster. She was just a girl to him, a silly human girl with a sick and twisted daddy.

So where was the part where he felt the obligation to give a shit? He battled with himself, walking so silently into her bedroom. Why did he care? Since when did he even grasp the concept of care?

He didn't like it.

He didn't like it even more that Mary was crying or the fact that she tried so hard to conceal it from him. She was draped once more on her bed, though the erotic effect was gone and rather than a pretty doll, Mary now was like a crushed puppet, her invisible, broken strings fallen around her.

"I thought you were gone," She said, lying on her stomach and trying to feverishly wipe her tears away.

"Never too far Mary," he'd said simply.

Vergil had been her rescuer, had shown her the moon and stars as she had never seen them, shown her the way that the sea pelted so powerfully against the shore. He made her smell the salt in the air, the way it came in a rush when the ocean clashed with the land. And so once more, in a different way, he became her rescuer again, crawling over her body and throwing her on her back.

She had been so startled, staring in horror and shame, knowing that all of her secrets had been laid open. She'd stared into his eyes, so close as they loomed above her, so inhuman in their fierceness. Mary looked at him with fear and he decided quite quickly that he hated it, hated that she would recognize sex with shame and fear.

"Don't look at me like that," He scolded softly. "I'm not him."

Before that time, he'd never even acknowledged wanting her, never once let up his guard. For all she knew, she might as well have been a serpent to him, a particularly ugly bug. He saw that insecurity, that bewilderment that he even wanted to be so close to her.

And then he understood something else; her self disgust. She must have thought he'd be repulsed, the daughter of a pedophile, down on her knees beneath the pelt of a shower head, eyes closed so tight as she performed her obligation.

She hated sex, she hated the shame and the revulsion of it. It was the abominable duty and suddenly Vergil wanted to take her away from all that. He wanted to show her…. to show her how incredible it could be, how beautiful it could feel and how far from herself, from this awful place, it could take her.

He let her suddenly hold him, let her cry like she'd been holding the tears away for years. She actually bawled, his face against her throat as he felt every single gasp, every single heave of breath that she'd kept in for so long. Her arms went around his neck, her body convulsing with the sorrow.

"Why?" She just kept whispering. "Why does he……."

When it seemed she'd calmed, the quietness of the room only occasionally interrupted by a hurtful sigh, he pulled away, staring down at her. Her face looked like a doll's and he hated that he could think of no other word for it. She was just a doll; sad doll with tear tracks.

She must have seen it then, the slight slant in his lower eyelid, the way his facial features remained forever stoic yet always altered in a manner that would seem invisible to anyone who didn't know him. But Mary's eyes widened, her hands slowly coming from his shoulders as she recognized a very carnal desire burning behind his lashes.

He wanted to show her something and in contradiction to her usual naïve nature, she knew precisely what it was.

"Let me do this for you," He whispered, moving his mouth to her throat.

She'd shuttered beneath him and he still felt (in his moment of remembrance), how nervous she was as he disposed of her clothes, his mouth moving over every exposed inch, covering her skin with his breath.

'Don't fear this,' he thought, wondering if it was some how received. His icy fingertips moved over her stomach, sliding over her hips and taking her skirt down with them, her body trembling as she let him do it.

He never really understood what she might have been thinking, her eyes still tracked with tears as he removed his shirt, knowing that the moonlight cherished every vein and muscle.

Tentatively she moved her hand to his chest, exploring the smoothness of his skin as he undid every button of her shirt, taking her hand into his own while he slid the clothing from her body.

Vergil had to smile suddenly, caught in the midst of his own memories, the angry, powerful female before him an entirely different person than the one he'd had sex with so long ago for the first time. She'd been terrified, her pulse pounding beneath her cream colored skin. He could see her heart, working beneath the roundness of her chest, the white bra barely covering it.

He kissed away the straps, letting his teeth drop them from her shoulders, quick fingers unfastening the clasp. She grabbed it suddenly, holding the top to conceal herself.

"Vergil, wait," She swallowed, trying to tell him something that might at one point have been useful information that instead he'd, at the time, totally discarded. "Vergil I haven't…"

He silenced her with a kiss. The first kiss they'd shared and one of the last with any merit, her fear forgotten as she let her arms wind around his throat, let him more or less tear the panties from her body.

He'd slowly let himself push inside, figuring that taking it slowly would keep her more at ease, her breath hitching when the length and width felt too immense, the sensation like being filled up with something you'd never even known was missing. Her head was thrown back, his mind filled with the images of her masturbating, unknowingly quickening his pace as he plunged deep inside of her.

Unfortunately and yet possibly fortunately, Vergil was totally unaware that as he pushed inside of her, sweat soaking every inch of their sheets, breaths caught and then forced out, that he had taken Mary's virginity.

He smiled, coming back to reality, Lady's face twisted in confusion. Mary and Lady, he grinned, two entirely different women.

"What are you smiling about?" She demanded, fiery and demanding as always. God how he loved that.

"I was just thinking about you," He winked, letting her know precisely what had caused such a rare smirk to cross his face.

"Hm," she rolled her eyes. "and I can't imagine what it was about."

He lifted an eyebrow, moving with serpent-like grace around her.

"I was thinking of our first time," He whispered in her ear, standing behind her as he let his hands roam over her throat and shoulders. "Do you remember?"

Yeah, because she'd so easily forget. Lady crossed her arms, face tight as she let her mind roam back to that memory, never long forgotten. Even as it was so long ago, just thinking about it made her pulse quicken, her body remembering every thrust, every pain, every minute when she'd decided she loved both.

"I was so scared," she breathed. "God, I was just fucking petrified of you."

But even as the good memories came, the bad inevitably rode along. It had been one of the most magical times of her life and the most painful too. Because he'd changed.

Hell yeah, he'd changed.

It was like she'd seen him, the real him, for the first and last time. Or that's what she'd made herself believe for so long. When he'd been so cruel to her, so dismissive, she'd just smiled to herself, thinking, knowing that it was all just an act.

When he'd call her awful things, when he'd borderline rape her, she knew it was just his way. 

Sex had been fucking brutal after that, Mary constantly undecided at who was the bigger monster, her father or Vergil. The demon would wake her at night, already plunging painfully inside her tired body, never even having given her the courtesy of asking. He would just take, always just take, grabbing her hair so painfully in a twisted knot, banging against her body.

"You filthy fucker," he'd whispered one night, tongue shoved inside her body as he peered up from between her legs. "you just love this don't you?"

Another night she had been woken by her body being flung through the air, landing violently on her stomach. She'd squirmed along the floor, terrified, her tiny fingertips scratching for any type of weapon when he'd pulled her back, pinning her down.

"Shhhhhh Mary," Her teeth had clenched as she felt his smile against her cheek. "wouldn't want to wake daddy would you?"

She was sick with herself, knowing she couldn't or more importantly, wouldn't say no. He may or may not have even listened to her, knowing what her body wanted, knowing that anything she'd whisper against it was a lie.

He'd fucked her raw from behind, her head yanked back until she thought her neck would break. Blood finally trickled between her thighs, sating the beast for a moment. Or so she had thought, eyes flying open when she felt the tip of him against her ass, whimpering like a fucking dog when he'd forced inside.

He'd clamped a hand over her mouth when she'd cried out, insisting a hundred times that she'd like it, promising that she'd learn to love it all.

Fucker.

She'd hated herself.

She looked at him now, how handsome he was, how totally aware of it he'd always been. So chiseled, so masculine, so powerful.

She'd hated herself so much. She looked up, blinking hard. God, she could have killed herself back then, unable to tell him no when he'd rub his cock against her cheeks, unable to tell him no when he'd brutalize her insides.

She would look across the dinner table, seeing him watch her, seeing her naked body flash across his eyes, seeing every disgusting scenario he would practice on her later. She would hear him, whispering the most vile, demeaning things in her ear, even as her father would be prattling on and on about his latest discoveries and experiments.

She became Vergil's victim just as much as she'd ever been her father's.

Another ball, another charitable event that all benefits would end up in daddy's pocket. She hated herself, staring in the bathroom mirror. The face inside was a little older, the eyes a little more tired, the body a little more wrecked. Makeup smeared over bruised arms, face just a porcelain doll, she'd let herself cry.

The heart that had once pumped so furiously for him, the heart that had once inspired embarrassing poems, the heart, was broken. She wanted him to love her, but he didn't. She wanted him to save her, but he wouldn't.

Mary was in love with Vergil and Vergil was in love with a little doll he could play with.

She'd gasped in shock when she realized she was being watched, her fingers going numb, her hands trembling when she figured it was Vergil. But instead, dark brown hair and deep gray eyes came into the light, sorrowful with sympathy that she hated.

"You shouldn't be in here," She'd snapped, embarrassed as she wiped away tears. "The party is outside."

"I know, I'm sorry," the boy had said, at least a year or two older than her. "I just…."

He'd glanced away, the side profile of his face coming into view. Mary had blushed, realizing that she hadn't taken the time to realize how handsome he was, how familiar he was to her father's banquets. Aaron, that was his name, son to a wealthy inventor.

"I see you every year Mary," he'd sighed, eyes sad. Sad for her. "and every year I see it."

"What do you see," she'd scoffed, rolling her eyes.

"How sad you are."

Lady swallowed, coming back to herself, walking away from Vergil's touch. His fingertips slid from her shoulders, the skin so deceivingly soft for a monster.

"Every year it gets worse," Aaron had whispered. "every year you're further from everything around you. Your smiles are harder, your laughing so mechanical. You play along with everything like it's a chore, playing the perfect part when anyone can see that you're miserable."

He'd moved even closer, Mary backing up against the sink of the bathroom.

"You cry inside," He'd breathed, seeing that her body sank away from him almost in fear. "You're crying all the time, especially when you're smiling."

She'd wanted to cry then.

She'd wanted someone to hug her, someone to hold her tight and not just because it was a means to fool her heart into feeling something. She'd wanted real, human touch from someone who saw her as what and who she was: Mary….not the fucking doll.

But it was when Aaron had touched her, three fingers smoothing softly down her cheek that she'd seen them; burning silver eyes illuminated through the shadows of the doorframe.

Vergil had seen, concealed in the darkness, waiting, watching like a wild animal stalking the injured. His gaze was sharp and fierce, absolute madness sparking behind wild eyes.

She had known then, blood flushed from her face as she excused herself. She'd known that he would punish her later, known just as well as anything that the sex would be vicious and cruel as ever.

So she'd waited for it and it hadn't come. She'd waited and waited, sitting like a naughty child, banished to their bedroom, hands wringing themselves out. But he hadn't come.

She'd trembled in fear and awful excitement, cursing herself for wanting it, for expecting it. A storm quaked outside, the sea crashing in the distance. Lightening illuminated the room and she'd held her breath, expecting at any second she'd see him.

Yet only later had Vergil come, face a mask of complete insanity as he'd furiously walked towards her. Seeing madness raging behind his eyes, Mary had feared for her life, crawling back in terror, crying out his name as if she had to remind him of it.

It was only when he'd stopped at the edge of the bed, staring at her, that she'd seen it. His pupils had shrunk to tiny, almost invisible dots, the outside of his eyes a volcanic red. As often as she'd thought it, as often as she'd figured it, her suspicions had been ultimately confirmed in that very moment; Vergil was a monster.

"What are you," she'd cried out, the lightening crashing outside and revealing the shape of his true form. Like awesome shadows crawling around him, she'd caught glimpses of what he truly was, the demon inside trying to claw its way out. Wings flashed behind him, there one second, gone the next as thunder made the entire house tremble.

"What are you?" She'd suddenly screamed, lightening flashing, blood covering his whole body. "What have you done?!"

It was only then that he'd thrown them, one by one, three fingers, right on her bed.


	9. Chapter 9

"Sparda?"

Merely a flash in the darkness and both pistols were trained straight on the intruder's face, a wicked gleam dancing in both of Dante's eyes. Oh, but now was not the time.

An old man's face, mouth set in a O, gazed at him through the shadows, face lined with sun-drenched years. It wasn't a bad face that you immediately disliked, just a face that told of many nights and many days, none experienced with laziness or lax.

The man's hair was a dried, almost cotton-candy-like white, still streams of slight silver clinging to his temples in one last battle before the imminent demise of his youth. Pretty gray eyes, with oddly long lashes, beamed with surprise and wonderment, unapologetically searching Dante's face.

Dante growled deep in his throat, uncomfortable with the man's seeming lack of fear. It almost appeared that the guy was drinking him in, filled with some insatiable NEED to stare and soak up the younger man's appearance. It was a completely awkward stare and Dante's patience (as rarely as it ever showed its face) was not exactly accompanying him on this little journey.

With a cock of his cream plated gun, the old man's hands darted into the air, Dante's grin of satisfaction catching the pale rays of moonlight that cast themselves through the planes of the nearby window.

"Wait a second," The hoarse voice of the man came, more talking to himself than to the peevish hunter. "Wait just a second."

Without another word he was in the young man's face, totally oblivious to the guns on either side of his ears. He walked all around Dante, just staring in disbelief, his actions alone stalling the half-breed from any possible violence. The bastard even had the gall to push his fingers through the white strands of Dante's forehead, earning a shocked and indignant intake of air.

Two hands on either side of his face and the younger twin had feared that the temperature in hell was inching to dangerous lows, eyes complete saucers when the old guy's face damn near planted itself against him. The closeness alone left him speechless, not exactly a familiar situation in Dante's life.

"Vergil?" The man whispered almost inaudibly. And then he looked deep, deep, deep within the young man's eyes, a slight smirk crawling over his mouth. "No, I'm still alive, so you must be Dante."

"Uh." The young hunter managed to articulate, blinking hard as if to signify his discomfort.

"My God, but you two are just your father incarnate," The laugh came. "I'm looking at you and I swear to it, your mother's good looks never even registered. You look just like your dad."

A pissy snort and Ebony and Ivory were once more fixated on the old man, Dante's ever present ego waving its middle finger to civility.

"Are you kidding?" He spat. "I'm a fucking bronze God in the flesh."

The man's white hair flew backwards as he laughed heartily, waving his finger at the guns.

"Now I KNOW you're Dante."

"Yeah, and who are you?"

The man smiled warmly, unafraid when the other man's finger squeaked impatiently on the side of his gun.

"I'm Joseph," He said, eyes kind as he looked deeply once more into Dante's eyes. "And I helped raise you."

The guns didn't lax in their position, though the drive to use them slackened with the youngest twin's ever-present curiosity getting the better of him.

"I didn't think you'd much remember me," Joseph said dismissively. "It was after all, a long time ago and you were just a small child then. I knew your dad very well, God rest, and I had the ultimate pleasure of knowing Eva, your mom."

"How…….." Dante swallowed hard, finally dropping his guns to his sides. "How did you know them?"

"Oh," The older man sighed, grabbing a nearby stool, dusting it off and having a seat. "Back in the day I was a bit of a historian. Sparda came to me when I was still rather young, not much older than you I imagine. He needed a text which I only knew about, needed many things from time to time. Spell books, information, hell, even great vacation sights to take your momma."

Dante snorted, hardly able to believe the domestication Joseph was professing. It was hard to see his parents in any sort of light, let alone that of a somewhat 'normal' family. He looked around the ruins of their old house dismally, wanting and not wanting to listen to the old man's depiction of his father, their father. It struck him as almost ironic, as he suddenly saw the truth of their strange little situation; as much as Vergil despised any and all knowledge of his mother, denied her existence in most cases, the same was truth with Dante and Sparda.

"Your father was a great man Dante," Joseph said, as if reading his mind. "A great man who made great sacrifices for you and your family."

Dante turned away peevishly, sharp eyes darting angrily over black drenched walls and soot that gathered all around him. He willed himself not to cross his arms, willed himself not to characteristically kick something across the room.

"Do you know that when you were born," Came Joseph's soft voice. "That when your momma cried, Sparda told me that he wished he could. He was so proud, so shocked, so overwhelmed, that a demon God told a human man that he wished he could cry, wished he could demonstrate just how ecstatic he was. His voice even shook Dante. A two thousand year old devil was damn near speechless when he looked at you boys."

"Yes well, I recall his speechlessness," The twin retorted, still unable to meet the other's eyes. "I recall that very much in my life."

"Do you even know why you hate your father so much Dante, or is it just more convenient that way?"

Twin blue eyes stared shock-still, trained manically on the old man.

"How… dare… you." He hissed, wanting nothing more than to blow the man's brains against the wall behind him.

"Have you even thought about it though?" Asked the man again, undeterred by the homicidal glare. "Your father loved you Dante and you seem to remember him only by the fact that he's gone now. Even as a child, you hated your mother's stories, hated it when she'd promise Sparda would be back soon. I saw it on your face every time that light came into her eyes, every time she thought that the next day, your dad would be back. You recall him only by the dismal times he represents, not as the man that loved you and your mother more than the waking world."

"You don't know anything old man," Dante sighed.

"On the contrary kiddo, I know a damn good amount," Joseph crossed his arms. "I was there when you and your brother were created."

An even weirder look plastered itself over Dante's face, eyes wide.

"That's sick."

Joseph's eyes widened as well, arms flailing out in front of him as an embarrassed laugh cracked the tense air.

"No no no no!" He chuckled, shaking his head. "I don't mean I was there when you were conceived, good God! No no Kiddo, I certainly don't know you THAT well! But you must know that you and Vergil weren't exactly brought into the world through the most natural of methods. That would have been impossible."

"What exactly do you mean?" Dante asked, attention finally transfixed on Joseph.

"Sit down kid," The other man gestured at a nearby chair. "This might be a bit of a long haul."

Dante actually obeyed for once, twisting the scorched chair so that his legs were wrapped around the back, arms crossed in front while he nestled his chin over them.

"Your mother and father planned for you," Joseph began. "You were their miracle, their hope for the world. Sparda knew that the world was doomed, knew that the existence of human life in general was at the mercy of a ticking time bomb that is and was the underworld. His main source of power locked away in hell, Sparda's strength, insurmountable as it was, slowly began to dissipate with time. He knew seconds ticked away, knew that time was short for both himself and for the humans.

"It was an inevitability he slowly forced himself to admit, slowly began to begrudgingly accept. And it wasn't even until he met Eva that any hope on the contrary even dawned on the old bastard."

"So you really did know my mother," Dante smiled slightly.

"Know her? I introduced her to your dad!" Joseph grinned. "She was a librarian, a damn good one too. I would always go to her in search of more information to place in my own books, always picking her mind for the newest discoveries and latest knowledge pulsating through the world.

"I remember the first time he saw her too, the way a two thousand year old man, a complete and utter source of all things articulate was reduced to a mumbling, jittering teenager. He'd never demonstrated anything that didn't strike everyone as being planned years ahead of time. Even the words out of his mouth were so carefully construed it was as if he'd written them the day before, in undoubtedly perfect, articulate little scrawl. But Eva?

"Wow, Eva had that ancient devil by the balls the first day he met her. She could have asked him to invite Mundus to Christmas dinner and by damn if he wouldn't have delivered. I remember sitting in the library, scratching through my writing, watching as he nonchalantly picked through walls of useless books he would never, in another two thousand years, have had the least bit of interest in.

"Eva just sat there, tiny little glasses in place as she seemingly ignored him while reading through her own collection; a tiny little human woman of probably 24, completely ignoring an immaculate, Godlike creature that couldn't seem to keep his eyes off her.

"He'd poked through another section, making strange little 'interested' noises like, 'hm' or 'huh' or 'well'. Eva's eye brow had merely raised a fraction, still seemingly oblivious when he'd grabbed up a small collection of useless garbage and planted himself across from her at a table, pretending to rummage through all sorts of human garble.

" "Mr. Sparda," Eva had finally said, eyes never straying from one of her books. "If you're going to ask me to dinner tonight, now would be as good of time as any."

"And that was that! Sparda had been none-the-wiser, swallowing hard, looking fearfully over at me and then just shrugging.

" "Seven o'clock work for you?"

" "Sounds great. Casual or formal?"

" "Casual?"

" "Even better."

"She made him laugh. That was something that caught my interest from the get-go. Sparda wasn't himself and yet in the same way, was more of himself around Eva. In all the years I'd know the silly bastard, he'd never once cracked more than a cocky smile, never more than a promising grin to any and all demons that passed his way.

"Even in his explorations with women, Sparda was forever the charmer but never the charmed, smiling only on self command. He was the devious vampire in the midst of women, answering everything perfectly, smiling perfectly, asking questions perfectly. With Eva though he was forever caught-off-guard, the perpetual deer-in-headlights to whatever the crazy little lady would say next.

"She would say the most off-the-wall things, (between us, I think she totally indulged in them for his sake) loving to see that confused expression, loving to see that first raised eyebrow and loving mostly when he'd toss that white head of hair back and blast out a hearty laugh with her.

"They had humor and they good amounts of it. Why your damnable brother seems to be entirely void of that is totally beyond me. I never even realized your dad was funny until he'd go out with Eva, breaking into my home directly afterwards and enlightening me about all of the stupid things he'd said or all of the incredible things she'd said.

"I was their in-between friend and I tell you son, I didn't get much sleep in those days between the likes of those two. If it wasn't Sparda bashing his way through my door, too pissed off or too confused to actually open it, it was Eva on the phone at all hours of the night, inquiring about him or just bitching in general.

"I won't lie to you on that account either; those two could fight with the absolute best of them. They frustrated each other with their dishonesty and inability to truly commit. Eva was an independent woman who had long ago decided that the insatiable need of humans for companionship was merely a primal, animalistic instinct that she would never fall prey to. She saw herself as one of few that had evolved passed the need to procreate, passed the need to sate herself with someone else.

"Sparda, as you know, wasn't exactly the committed type either. He was a bit of lady's man, you might or might not know."

Dante made a face.

"Why else would he choose the form of such perfection?" Joseph laughed. "If he didn't love the attention, he would have picked the form of a ghastly old guy like me. No, Sparda fraternized with women but never stuck around for long. Thus, his relationship with Eva was both unexpected and frustrating for him.

"He'd clamber through my windows, already in a flabbergasted barrage of sentences, 'why this' and 'why that' and 'damnable female!' He'd pace, arms flailing as he demanded to know about human women, about their cursed irrationality, their insufferable logic.

" "Hell has it wrong," He fumed one day. "Oh but by the Gods, hell has it wrong! Torture, disembowelment, violence, blood, guts, give it all to me. I'd take an eternity of well designed hells before I'd spend one God damn day in a field of atrocious, blasted human females!"

"The worst was when they broke up, a year spent in the company of one pissed off, tyrannical devil."

"They broke up?" Dante interrupted, eyebrow quirking. "Mom actually dumped the bastard?"

Joseph's teeth creaked irritably at the disrespectful title though he said nothing regarding it, merely continuing on with his story.

"Actually, your dad broke up with Eva. It was right after her first demon attack, some lower, blood thirsty mongrel crawling through the library after hours and going after her. I'm not kidding when I tell you that your mother was a resourceful female, gouging the monster's eyes out with a mechanical pencil and beating it to death with nothing more than the high heel of her shoe. Scared' her to death I imagine, the ferocious creature chasing her up the stairs like it did.

"Now Eva was no slouch when it came to knowledge of the underworld but actually seeing it, actually having one creep up on her late at night? It scared her nearly to death. And your dad? Well, let's just say it was worse for him.

"Suddenly he didn't have the luxury of the fantastical life he'd been leading. He didn't have his imaginary concepts of a future with the woman he loved, didn't have the fictional world she'd momentarily unleashed upon him. He realized in one ten second conversation that to love her, meant inevitably, to lose her.

"He didn't want this life for your mom. He didn't want this inevitability. He didn't want the darkness that was his reality to haunt the light that he perceived your mom to be.

"So one day he just did it. He looked her deep in the eyes and lied his tongue right out of his mouth. Told' her he'd met someone else, someone better, stronger, smarter, anything to watch her heart break in front of his face. Anything to make her hate him, to forget him, to move on with no precious memories to grasp to.

" "She's more than anything you could conceive to be." He'd said. "She's the most beautiful woman I've ever met and I've promised to be with her. I could never look at you the same way I see her."

"Of course your mother responded by laying a flat palm across his face several times, which, might I add, he completely deserved in my opinion. Your father, being himself, hadn't exactly let me in on even the most menial of details, shocking both me and Eva when he'd released this titanic decision.

"It wasn't even until later on that night, unable to sleep in my perturbed state that I found him. He was crouched in his chair, cold, steel eyes facing off into a distance I couldn't see, face masked in a cruelty I'd never witnessed from him. I remember the shadows on his features, much like yours now, playing wicked games with the dancing firelight, making everything so much harder, so much more like porcelain, so much less human.

" "Why?" Is all I could ask. "Just tell me why?"

"He'd remained silent, knuckles white as he grasped the rests of the large, red velvet chair, eyes still trained on an invisible enemy across the room.

" "Sparda," I'd finally whispered, not to be discouraged by his silence. "Sparda….. you loved her."

" "Precisely." He'd said in so soft a voice, I might have imagined it. "Precisely."

"As Sparda saw it, he was a break in the perfect life that Eva might have had. He saw himself as a deterrent from the life she had every potential to create, a flaw in the perfect design.

" "This world is doomed," He'd told me six months later as I argued drunkenly with him in a bar. "But not in her lifetime. She still has many years to find someone else, someone better, someone more real and more human than I can ever be. What monster would I be if I tore that away from her? What man would I be if I bowed down to the devil inside so selfishly?"

"He loved her unconditionally, the truest kind of love. He loved her from afar because he knew he couldn't love her any other way. He was the beast that watched the beauty from far, far away, knowing that in all the ways of the world, they could never truly be together.

"They say that 'hell hath no fury as woman scorned'. I used to believe that as well until I endured an entire year in the company of a sex-starved, heartbroken Sparda. I swear by God that year the population of demons dropped below any scale it'd ever seen before. Sparda was a merciless force of pure violence, drenched with black blood he refused daily to even wash off.

"He wore the blood of his enemies proudly, bathing in it and indulging in it with a hunger I've never seen since. He would search for them, call for them, summon them with spells simply to birth them from the underworld and send them down once more. Demons stopped even coming to the human world, terrified of the condition their buddies were showing up in.

"It began to slowly terrify me, the depths to which your father sank. An unhealthy starvation came over him, the need to sate himself with flesh and blood and death and destruction. He became more of a devil than he'd been in a thousand years, all patronage to his human side slowly being forgotten. He'd dismiss me when I'd plead with him, asking him to eat, asking him to wash his body of all the gore and filth, begging that he indulge in some of his worldly traits.

"True, he didn't need to eat as his body naturally sustained itself. He didn't need to adorn lavish clothing and sport beautiful, clean white hair. I simply wanted to remind him, to watch him fall into his human self once more.

"It was as though he couldn't, as though it reminded him; yes, the more he tried to be a man, the more he was reminded he was a monster.

"Word came from a mutual friend that Eva was moving on, having been seen with a man or two from time to time. I'd never seen your father so ghost white, so absolutely soulless and depraved in a matter of moments. He'd refused to say a single word, the only language dancing in his eyes nothing more than an unspoken promise of absolute and total madness. He was insane with a jealousy he had no right to, all primal instincts of a devil rearing their ugly head.

"He'd never looked like an animal to me, never seemed anything more than a statuesque human. Suddenly I knew him for what he truly was, watching all sanity drain from the bottoms of his shoes, a thirsty, depraved look bleeding into those pure, white eyes.

"Sparda had gone quietly to his current mansion, a castle-like creation hidden away in the depths of a haunting forest, a place no human dared to travel passed dark and a place no animal made sounds above a whisper. Like a hermit, he'd refused to come out for days, ignoring my calls, ignoring the knocks on his windows and doors.

"I'd finally had enough, perching myself on his stoop like a homeless man, legs and arms crossed as I'd hollered out a thousand promises that I was not leaving until I saw that pathetic, self-pitying face of his.

"Night had come much faster than I had anticipated, my eyes counting the precise number of steps I'd need to take in order to reach my car if the need overcame me. Sounds began to fill the air, my mind at first scolding me for creating such pulls of the imagination. Soon though, I began to realize these sounds were real, the likes of which I can barely describe.

"At times, it was like a moaning, a raspy groan for air or something. At other times, it was as if a woman was screaming, screaming so hard it was a though next to nothing was coming out. Other sounds filled the air as though deep, thick fingernails were scratching along moist surfaces, cackling like that of a mad man following shortly after.

"I could feel the tiny hair on the back of my neck rising, my fingers sifting through my hair nervously as my eyes made out all sorts of grisly images in the dark that weren't actually there.

"But the sounds themselves were not imagined and I finally got up the courage to cast a rock through one of the nearby windows, breaking away the debris as I crawled inside your father's house. It became instantly clear that the culprits of the sounds were not coming from outside, but from deep deep within the cavities of the mansion.

"I'd crawled like a blind man through the darkness, tearing my lighter from my pocket and grasping it with shaky hands as I made my way through shadows unnatural to the known world.

"I merely followed the awful noises, screeching and heavy breathing making goose-bumps stand on my arms. Down down down I followed your dad's spiraling staircase, throwing the flame here and there, swearing that something like someone's breath had heated the back of my neck.

"I listened to the trickling of water as I went deeper and deeper into the murky depths of your father's dungeon, the bottom looking like nothing more than an endless cave. The sounds of my footsteps became quickly drowned out by the horrid noises that now rained heavily upon me, screaming and scratching and sounds of ripping flesh making me cringe. I'd seen enough horror in my life to keep most men awake for the remainder of it, yet I would be the worst of liars if I tried to claim that I wasn't experiencing absolute and total mortal fear.

"I'd clutched the back of my arm with my right hand as I reached the last step, trying to protect myself feebly as I wandered after my flame in the dark, turning a corner to behold a sight I wasn't ready (and never in a hundred years have been) to see.

"Hundreds -if not even into the thousands- of demons were chained in a massive room, bolted to walls through their very flesh or caged like animals behind impenetrable steel bars. Chains tore against concrete mercilessly as they frantically tried to free themselves, my stomach turning as I realized that many had eaten away at their own limbs in useless attempts to gain their freedom.

"Blood trickled like streams of water, damp, murky puddles of Godless fluid filling the floor. I'd choked as it dawned on me that I was even standing in it, blood and puss and piss and gore sinking over my shoes and into my socks.

"And even as my eyes refused to accept it, even as every fiber of my being proclaimed it couldn't be so, there in the middle stood Sparda himself, drenched to the bone in the very liquid I stood in. His eyes were cloaked in a madness I wouldn't have ever anticipated, seeing him suddenly as though he were a total stranger; a very scary stranger might I add.

"He was torturing them, you see, hunting them, finding them and dragging them there. If ever in my life I have felt pity for demons, it was then. I listened with a human's heart to their wails of pain, listened with human ears to their language-less pleas. I felt the very aura of their anguish, their own rather humane desperation to be freed of life itself.

"I nearly wept at the realization, nearly wept as I watched him grasp the flesh of a burly, chained demon and tear it from the bone in one relentlessly slow movement. The screams were unbelievable, the sound from the demon itself nearly drowned out by the other witnessing the scene. I don't claim to know the psychological aspects of being a demon and I certainly can't claim to know the emotions a demon can feel.

"Yet it was as if I were watching an enormous pack of hideously deformed dogs being mutilated without conscience by a tyrannical, monstrous being. Your dad no longer even appeared as a man, despite his form, instead, just a devil.

"He yanked chains that were connected to flesh, eyes closing in euphoria when a terrified, pained whimper came as an answer. It had become his only aphrodisiac, his only pleasure.

"Yet even in all his wisdom, in all the knowledge obtained by so many years captured by an already astute mind, your dad had missed one very important thing; that in his attempt to rid the world of demons, he'd become the most dangerous one it had ever seen.

"I had begged him through watered eyes, grabbed him by the shoulders and violently shook him, to stop this madness, this monstrosity. I'd screamed obscenities, threats, anything I could, begging that he withdraw from this absolute abomination of an existence.

"He'd remained completely silent, standing like a cold, crystalline statue, face blank as I'd rummaged through his home, finding large canisters of gasoline in the shed behind the mansion. He'd said nothing at all when I'd dragged them one by one down the staircase, one by one tossing them over the bodies of demons. And still not a word was spoken when I'd ignited my lighter once more, tossing it at the writhing creatures before they were engulfed in flames.

"I saw it and see it as a mercy. Their screeching haunts me to this day, the sound of heavy, tired bodies flapping their flesh against the bloody cement in an attempt to escape the fire that danced and demolished over the surface of their skin. The smell itself was enough to churn my stomach and I'd puked repeatedly as I watched them burn, unable to tear my eyes away

"It was hell on earth, provided by your dad himself and extinguished by yours truly."

"So he truly lost his mind then?" Dante interjected.

"Oh without question," Joseph had nodded, adjusting himself in his chair. "But it wasn't all blood, guts, butts and carnage. Your dad finally pulled his way out that self-destructive-blood-binge.

"Rather than being a ruthless, violent, blood crazed maniac, he retired into being a sulking, withdrawn, violent, somewhat blood crazed maniac. He began to venture out with me from time to time, hands tucked behind his back aristocratically as we'd wander aimlessly from day to day.

"He even began to dress nicely once again, letting me burn his gore spattered, blood crackling old clothes, and soon adorning pants and t-shirts. He didn't really indulge in his old fashions much after that, his royal-purple styles soon a forgotten namesake of times better than the ones he now endured.

"Simple black slacks and fitted white t-shirts became the norm, and for once, people didn't stare quite so flabbergasted when we'd walk through time square in search of a decent hot dog vendor. Sparda had become that which he'd always strived so desperately to be: just human; just another drained, lifeless, depressed human.

"His eyes suddenly spoke of the years they'd witnessed, his youthful appearance never having been quite the lie it then was. Clear, white eyes became tired early in the day, glancing without reflection at everything they saw.

"Women would grasp so tightly to his strong arms, the most beautiful, painted smiles nothing more than lifeless masks to him, each one just another mockery of her face. I would ask him repeatedly to try, to try to see something more in those around him. I believed that without his appreciation for those he saved each day, eventually, the effort would seem pointless.

"I would poke him, prod him with my elbow and point to some gathering of pretty, sophisticated young females that looked to be about the same age that he appeared. Eventually he'd told me to stop, that he couldn't see them, they all just looked like her anyways.

"He was as heartbroken as any human, as any devil. He began to doubt the reason as to why he strove so hard to save a race that could feel so much, could endure so much heartbreak and not implode upon themselves.

" "I keep thinking I'll die," He'd sighed one day, lying on his back mid-afternoon next to me in the park as we'd stared at the sky. "I keep thinking that one morning I just won't wake up. Despite my life, no injury in battle has ever wounded me so much, has ever put me on the verge of death so closely as this one. Yet that's the tragedy of it," He'd looked over to me through the saddest of eyes. "I keep on waking up despite it."

"Yes, no matter how many years your dad had lived, his heart had never aged quite so much as it did the year he spent away from your mom. He fought with reckless abandonment, drinking with no-holds-barred and going through women like most people would go through underwear. Yet they were just bodies that held the face he imagined (through his drunken stupor) they wore, awaking hours later crushed with guilt and the sadness that came when he realized his mistake.

"They weren't Eva and no amount of drugs or alcohol could make them Eva for him again. It wasn't so much that he minded the times he would remember but that he despised the times he would forget; because when he forgot, the truth of it would inevitably come swimming back and some God-forsaken demon would pay the price for it.

"I thought things would never get better, truly began to believe the world was doomed. And then suddenly, things changed again.

"We'd walked through Central Park in New York, the sun finally throwing up its arms, yawning and deciding to call it a day. It was one of those Hollywood sunsets, the sky drenched in luxurious yellows, pinks, orange and reds. Gold seemed to kiss everything it touched, even trash and old cigarette butts on the street gleaming with a magic they seldom ever saw.

"And there she was. Just walking. I thought all my time discussing Eva had made me looney, seeing her face everywhere. She was walking through the park with a mutual friend of ours, hair pulled back in a classy ponytail, skirt reaching just slightly below her knees and the perfect-fitting burgundy shirt gracing the top of her body. Characteristically, a tidy pack of books was concealed by both arms, her mouth going a mile a minute as she chatted up the other woman about God-knows-what.

"Sparda hadn't even seen her yet, eyes as always projected to the side and mind anywhere but the place his body inhabited. I feared the two would actually bump into each other, my mouth totally unable to voice even two words.

"At the last possible moment, they both glided towards the side, moving to avoid the other and heads bopping up nonchalantly to offer half-assed apologies for nearly colliding. Now I know it's cliché to word it this way but seriously, it was as if the world had just stopped in that single second, halted on its access, crossed its arms and stared with the expression of 'huh.' on its face.

"They both just stared, blinking as if they were imagining the other being there. Sparda kept his eyes trained on her face, tongue going into his cheek as if in confusion. Eva glanced a little less apologetically at the rest of him, probably trying to ascertain how someone who usually dressed so boldly was now doting the most common of outfits.

" "Sparda." She said in her most tight-lipped voice.

" "Eva." Sparda had nodded congenially.

"The world tapped its foot impatiently as a moment wore on, the two just sizing each other up.

"And then it was like things started up again and Eva and Sparda collided in the most crushing hug. Arms and legs alike intertwined, the embrace clumsy and desperate. Sparda raked his hands over her face, touching and kissing her cheeks as if to make sure they were real this time. Eva buried her nose into his neck, gasping in tiny, feminine breaths, like she was trying not to cry.

" "Oh you," Sparda was panting in despair. "you horrible horrible woman."

" "You evil, psychotic….." Eva searched for the word. "….. dumbass."

" "Oh God," Sparda had laughed, planting his whole face ontop of her head. "I have been so miserable. Oh God, Eva. I have been so… so miserable."

" "I know, I know."

" "The only way I could be more miserable," He proclaimed, petting her head desperately. "Is if I had to spend the rest of my life around you, damnable, insufferable female that you are."

" "I know exactly what you mean!" She'd cried, pulling him closer.

"A moment passed, the sun slowly gliding behind the far distance. It was the very last bit of sunlight that caught them both, the two bodies appearing like one big, massive gold creature that gleamed in an ethereal way.

" "Sparda," Eva whispered suddenly, looking up at him. "I wanna be miserable forever."

"And just like that, in just that way, they agreed to get married, both wanting to be miserable forever; one an evil, psychotic dumbass and the other an insufferable, damnable female."


	10. Chapter 10

"So that's the story," Joseph beamed, eyes alight with the finishing of his tale. "All of it that I'm aware of anyways."

"Cute." Dante huffed, hating that the story had been intolerably adorable; perhaps even partly true, if he'd allow his thoughts that luxury. "But you left out the part where me and my brother were conceived. Or did my mother lay us like the Easter Bunny and we magically popped out of eggs?"

"My God you are some sort of dismal," Joseph laughed. "While I'd hate to use the words 'test tube babies' essentially, that's what came about.

"Your father and mother knew that in order for her to carry a child, there had to be a alternate means of doing so. A human woman could not possibly endure the process and even if Eva could, the thought of a distressful, debilitating birthing process was out of the question for Sparda.

"So simply put, your mother and father devised a machine that could combine their-"

"Yeahhhh… yeahhh…. yeahhh….." Dante immediately cut Joseph off, waving his gun with disgust to pass off the matter. "I get the drift."

"Stuff," Joseph rolled his eyes, "They combined their 'stuff' to create a child that could potentially save the world when your father could not."

Dante's tongue went into his cheek, instantly reminding Joseph of Sparda though he politely declined to comment on the fact.

The idea was simple enough, the intelligence of both his parents not exactly an idea foreign to Dante. True, he despised his father but he wouldn't deny that if presented with a goal and a means of obtaining it, the man could execute it well enough.

"As entirely Super Man as this all sounds," Dante rubbed his head with the grip of his gun. "Why are there two of us?"

"Well," Joseph drawled out slowly, the wrinkles in his face more apparent when his features tensed. "that seems to be where the story goes awry. The obvious reason is that the gene split, creating two entities. Though this hadn't been the original plan, Sparda insisted that perhaps the end result of two sons was in direct connection with their demonic capabilities or perhaps their instinct to learn towards either good or evil."

"So basically he thought that one would be good," Dante mused with a touch of sarcasm. "and one would be evil. Genius. Way to look outside the box old man."

"Precisely," Joseph shrugged. "though your mother's reaction was much akin to your own. She thought it was the stupidest thing she'd ever heard and promptly told your father as much.

"Call it humanity but Eva simply could not wrap her mind around the thought that one of her sons could simply be evil and the other entirely good. In their efforts to create the perfect hero, how could they have created the perfect antagonist at the same time?

" 'All children are born innocent,' She would unapologetically scream at your father. 'that's why we choose! That's why we have choice! That's why we grow up and DECIDE what we do with our lives and what we don't do! It has NOTHING to do with how we are born you ignorant ass!'

" 'Oh how I am the Gods' great hacky-sack!" Sparda had thrown up his arms, white hair flying wildly. 'Bless me with the all power, logical thoughts of a human woman! Yes, because 2,000 years in the universe has afforded me no abilities to think for myself!' He'd groan sarcastically.

"It went on for years after that well up until you boys were toddlers, two white haired reflections of each other.

"Once I babysat you, reading a book well into the night before hearing the loud steps of your father crack the silence.

"Speechless, your father and mother entered the living room, the eyes of both speaking volumes of a fight they'd obviously just endured. Eva wordlessly left for the kitchen with slow movements, shoulders slumped as though the world rested upon them-which it quite possibly did.

"Sparda fell more than sat into his great velvet chair, eyes searching my face from across the room. It was unnerving, as I could feel his silent fury like static electricity in the room, for once getting the oddest sensation that he didn't trust me or something. Almost as though he were sizing me up.

" 'Have you noticed anything,' he whispered, demonically masking his voice so that I knew only he and myself could hear. 'anything at all I need to know?'

"Of course I was completely aware of what he was asking, only caught off guard at the roughness in his voice, the furious beam in his eyes that seemed to catch me like a predator. I don't think I need to tell you that if, at the moment, he had suspected any sort of untruth in my words, he would have killed me. It was the first time I'd ever experienced that from him and probably the first time I could describe to you how doomed every demon faced with that look must have felt.

"I lowered my head as I walked out the front door, motioning for him to accompany me. I knew Eva would hate it, hate even more the words that undoubtedly would spill from me. I HAD noticed differences, HAD seen them not just in this night, but in the many nights I'd watched you boys.

"I spoke low when I told him of the unapologetic glares Vergil would give after delivering a man-sized wallop to the side of your head. I told him through gritted teeth of Vergil's cold smirk that seemed only to cover his mouth when you would cry from his cruelness. I told him even of the meanness and madness that Vergil would enact on neighborhood cats and dogs, tell-tale signs of a sociopath with homicidal tendencies.

"I also insisted that I didn't know the psychological differences between human children and demon children. I insisted a thousand times that we shouldn't even GUESS what to expect from you boys, that perhaps this experiment was fool-hearty but that there simply was no going back about it.

"The look in your father's eyes though," Joseph lowered his head in defeat. "there was no second guessing about it. We simply returned home after my bout of babbling and he kissed your mother on the forehead, whispering 'let's not fight' before saying his farewells to me for the evening."

Joseph let out a forlorn sigh, racking his fingers through his hair.

"As you may have guessed," he looked into Dante's eyes. "your mother and I never saw him again."

He said it as though he were reading the end of the bible, speaking as though Christ's head had fallen for the last time as he dangled from the cross. The end of all ends.

"So he left," Dante spoke as though to himself. "as I always figured. Times got tough and he bailed."

A short huff of indication left Joseph and he boldly slapped Dante's shoulder.

"Seriously?" He laughed with no humor. "Seriously? After all that? After all I just told you?"

He threw his hands into the air.

"Boy you have some major daddy issues!"

Dante scowled but didn't exactly deny the fact, waiting for Joseph to speak once more.

"If you're thinking it's that simple," Joseph spoke. "Than I might as well tell it all over again because you are missing something! If your father couldn't handle 'tough times' he didn't exactly have a lot of business being with your mother, did he? Or being a rouge Demon for that matter, huh?"

"So I'm missing one thing," Dante shrugged off the logic. "WAS Vergil born completely evil?"

"Ha!" Joseph raised an eyebrow. "Were YOU born completely GOOD? I'm kinda thinking' that'd be a resounding 'no', wouldn't you?"

Dante allowed himself to smile at that, for one brief moment letting himself hope that this man was right; that Vergil wasn't just some soulless Demon that just so happened to have a human form.

"Do you remember Nero?" Joseph suddenly asked, an odd question to Dante. "Your brother's 'imaginary' friend?"

Dante simply nodded, hiding his animosity towards the invisible entity that his brother had always preferred to him.

"I don't think he was imaginary at all." The man shook his head. "I think he was as real as you and I and we simply could not see him. I believe he was possibly even the dark force that encouraged your brother to be so cruel to you, even towards your mother. Perhaps Nero even encourages him to this day for all we know. And he most certainly encouraged Vergil the day…"

Joseph trailed off, making a face that instantly translated into one a person would use when they'd opened their big mouth and regretted it.

"The day…" Dante trailed on encouragingly. "what day?"

"The day he betrayed your mother and you," The older man spoke seriously. "The day he invited the demons into your house. The day Eva was killed."

Now the guns fixed their steely gaze once more at the old man, trigger fingers itchy to unleash hell.

"My mother was killed because my bastard father abandoned us," The twin seethed through gritted teeth. "he left us to the helplessness and debauchery he introduced my mother to. He left us a Goddamn target with bullseyes on our asses!"

"Yes, yes!" The man suddenly insisted, backing away and wailing his hands defensively in front of him. "I don't disagree but don't you see? It was the ultimate test!"

"I'm getting very tired of your riddles," The clack of a bullet being loaded into the chamber echoing through the silence. "What test?"

"Good and Evil," Was the simple answer. "Nero wanted to know the same questions your father had been asking. Was Vergil good or evil?"

Dante regrettably lowered his weapon for what felt like the thousandth time, holstering it so as to avoid succumbing to his quick temper and simply blasting the old man away.

"So….." He more breathed than spoke, lopping his head tiredly to one side. "What was the answer?"

"Well…." Joseph very, very slowly put his hand on Dante's shoulder. "you're still alive aren't you?"

**A/N: ****Hello all! I know it's been forever but to kind of roughly explain, I've basically been in a crazy depression for a super long time and haven't really felt even worthy enough to write, if that makes any sense (I know, super self pity here). So oddly enough, after years, I actually got on this site and saw some of your awesome reviews and encouragement and figured today was as good as any to try again.**

**I can honestly say, I have not written in years. I haven't touched the 'stuff' so to speak. This was a huge, scary jump for me and I have no one to thank but you guys. **


	11. Chapter 11

She'd never forgiven him for killing Aaron. She never would.

Vergil's throat tightened with distaste as he read her features, with a magic only he seemed to possess, knowing instantly the memory that flashed through her mind.

"Aaron," He breathed it with a tedious sigh. "That….. MIGHT have been a bit unnecessary on my part." He mused with a slight devilish grin.

"You're such an unbelievable bastard," she seethed, shaking her head. "You barely knew him."

"YOU barely knew him," he spat in detest, brows furrowed, pointing his finger at the ground. "YOU barely knew him!"

She plastered a look of superiority all over her face, tossing her head to the side, her hair peevishly following.

"I could have gotten to know him quite well though," she taunted. "couldn't I?"

Vergil visibly cooled himself, loving that, after so much time, she could still make that steely old heart of his beat just a bit quicker.

Clever, clever girl.

"My sweet girl," he crooned, blinking ever so lazily, "I simply don't think that was in the cards."

She swung quickly, impressing him; impressing him enough to even let the blow land, the feel of the soft flesh over her knuckles bending as they pressed over the granite of his skin. He knew, with a slight chuckle, it would only serve to hurt her, the sensation like the bat of a fly's wing on his cheek.

Despite herself, she continued with the barrage, groaning deep within before each blow. He loved that she was by no means dainty, teeth clenched and a warrior's devotion burning in her eyes. He loved even more that she knew she couldn't win yet still tried.

_'Little warrior woman_,' he mused to himself, _'little warrior doll._'

"I won't stop you, you know," he sighed as she continued, visibly beginning to wear out. "You can touch me all you want."

Even sicker still, he bent forward to receive the attack at her level, breathing "I know you like it" into her face.

That, predictably, only sent her into a mindless rage, her fists flying with abandonment and barely any aim. Oh but hadn't he always said that to her?

_"I know you like it"… _

_"You'll learn to love it."…_

Finally he'd had enough, watching as she furiously pulled a gun from her holster, his hand roughly snatching hers before the weapon was unleashed on his face.

"Ah, ah, ah now," He swooned at her, covering her hands to disable the attack. He pulled her into his chest, wrapping one hand painfully into the back of her hair, yanking her throat towards him.

He covered her exposed neck with the sweetest of kisses, shushing her attempts to escape.

"Little angel doll," he breathed, letting his bottom lip slide upwards towards her lips.

"Why do you fight me so? I'll never understand it. Are you fighting me," he connected eyes with her, rubbing the tip of his nose against hers, "or are you fighting yourself?"

"What the fuck do you want?" She hissed through her teeth, eyes burning with rage. "Why are you here?"

"To torment you?" He smiled almost sweetly, letting her go.

"Very funny," She righted herself, glaring absolute knives and pitchforks at him.

"Really?" He cocked his head sideways. "and people say I have no sense of humor."

Her answer was merely a scoff that, as per usual, he'd already predicted. He turned away from her, trudging a few paces with his hands wrapped aristocratically behind his back. His head was held high, as always, as if he were counting the cracks of the ceiling above him. He took a few thoughtful strides before turning once more to face her, the oddest look covering his face.

If Lady had ever boasted herself as being able to read his features, she cursed that assumption now, unable to understand his behavior suddenly. He looked at her with seriousness yet detachment, seeming to be sorting his thoughts. Was the insurmountable Vergil at a loss for words? Was the God of all things debauched and monstrous trying to process what to say suddenly?

"It's Teminigru," he finally said seriously, hands still wrapped securely behind him. "it's going to rise again."

She tilted her head to the side, shrugging.

"I think we all eventually figured that would happen, though I didn't bank on you being the one to do it….." She smiled hatefully. "AGAIN that is."

"Well…. isn't that sweet?" he mused. "It's different now though. It's different this time."

"How so?"

"Because THIS time," He smiled with no humor, lacing his fingers softly through her hair. "we have a little more information, now don't we little Ms. Virginal Mary?"

She yanked away from his touch, feeling the twinge of embarrassment flutter in her stomach. That WAS quite a technicality her father had overlooked. No denying that.

"It WILL work this time doll face," He told her with a look that denied any protests. "and neither you or Dante will be able to stop it. "

"Then why tell me about it?" She asked, searching his eyes, one to the other. "Very 'comic book villain' of you, isn't it?"

His smile lightened slightly, his eyes appreciating her once more. Ah, but she was never very stupid for a naïve girl. That he would admit, if only to himself.

"I suppose it is," he agreed. "but the difference is that I want you by my side when it happens."

He approached her once more, backing her into a corner she couldn't escape. He curled his fingers around hers, pressing them into his chest almost adoringly. His eyelashes batted lazily as he simply breathed her in for a moment, almost a tender moment- if one could consider it such- letting the flesh of her fingers slide daintily over his lips.

She looked up at him, daring herself to believe this moment even existed, daring to even acknowledge the words he'd just spoken; even daring herself to remember how long she'd wanted to hear them.

_"I want you by my side." _

_"I want you."_

She would have moved if she could. She would have distanced herself in every form of the word if at all possible. She hated to have him this close, body plastered like paint against hers; feeling even the coldness of his body, so hard like concrete yet so pliable when he deemed it so.

A million fantasies, a million thoughts and all over a precession of merely seconds; blissful seconds though, tossed into a lifetime.

"Why?" she breathed so softly. "Just tell me why?"

Again his brow furrowed as though processing his thoughts before he spoke them, his eyes darting anywhere but hers.

He cleared his throat, finally matching her gaze with a crude, detached grin.

"What is the old saying," He spoke almost lazily. "It is better to be on the right hand of the devil than in his path."

…

….

….

An odd mood had come over Vergil as he left the subway station, a small smile gracing the crook of his mouth as his ears still rang with Lady's answer of "Go fuck yourself". What a silly little thing she was, a human body with a devil's heart beating furiously underneath.

He was surprised though, at the strange pulling he felt within his breastbone, an irritating sinking in his chest with the thought that, perhaps, she truly meant to stand by her decision. Perhaps, she truly would never join him. And I guess, if one could say that Vergil admitted any 'feelings' on the matter, he would have felt quite annoyed with the decision.

'Feelings', he scoffed within himself. 'feelings.'

What a preposterous thing! In all the ways that humans demanded to castrate themselves, succumbing to their tiny 'feelings' was perhaps the most ridiculous.

"Yes Tiny Tim," He mulled aloud peevishly. "why don't you go ahead and break your one good leg while you're at it."

A simple race that simply confused him. Odd though, that he'd tried so hard for so long to understand them. Like a pretty puppet he'd even tried to mimic their actions, words and deeds, wanting so fiercely for his mother to approve of him.

Eva. Ah. Now there was a lovely thought, Vergil rolling his eyes as his footsteps became harsher on the cement beneath them.

He walked with a soldier's intensity through the ghettos and projects of the downtown area, his exit of Lady much less dramatic as his entrance. Red brick buildings looked dank and rundown around him, stretching up tirelessly towards a sky that bled with acidic rain; as if even the sky disliked the demolished, pathetic attempts of humans to touch it.

He kicked a bottle, or more, disintegrated it, eyebrows furrowed as his mother's beautiful face fluttered in his memory.

It was as though she'd looked at both of her children at one time, eyes darting from one infant to the other, before she'd inevitably picked Dante, wrapping him gently in her arms and deciding he was, without a doubt, the better child.

And that was that. No room for objections, no room for improvement.

Perhaps it was all parents' curse to have a favorite and be unable to hide that fact. Perhaps he had even learned to read her subconscious thoughts, read her movements and even the small crinkle of pride at the corner of her eyes when she'd look at his brother. She truly may not have ever have known how obviously she loved Dante and how obviously she avoided Vergil.

Even the way she'd touch the older twin was as though she were reaching for a hot coal, fingers cautious and timid. Maybe human skin wouldn't have noticed, but Devil skin did.

His eyebrows crinkled even harsher as he recalled the night Nero had unleashed holy hell into their seemingly perfect little world, Eva's eyes never straying from Dante, her last movements deliberate and executed with perfection. Yes, her very last movement spent on reaching for her beloved son, her soft fingertips sliding down his cheek.

One. Two. Three.

He scoffed out loud, the brick buildings echoing with his sharp intake of air.

He'd hated childhood. He'd tried so hard. He'd tried so fucking hard. In every way he'd craved his mother's attention, his only total and complete failure in life being that he simply couldn't make her love him.

It seemed odd enough now, that he'd ever cared so heartily about something so human. It seemed though, at the time that nothing else truly mattered. She was the 'everything' in his world. She WAS his world and she just couldn't seem to love him.

Perhaps even in his first memories, he'd known something was amiss. He'd decided quite early on that Eva held his brother much more often, much more fiercely than she held him.

Her imploring eyes would scan his face when it seemed she was 'forced' to hold her older son, searching for something, though he didn't know what. For the longest time, he even equated her intimacy with Dante with the fact that the younger devil simply cried more often.

Dante had always garnered Eva's attention better and for that reason, Vergil very quickly learned to hate his brother. Others might have been oblivious to the fact but Vergil's hold on the reality of the world slowly began to deteriorate with the absence of his mother's affection.

He couldn't really even remember the first time he'd heard the scratching of Nero's voice in his ear. At first it was like the slight hissing of a snake, Vergil's head turning abruptly to find the source and seeing nothing. His eyes would dart furiously around the room yet he could spy nothing.

This continued for weeks, the hissing sometimes almost sounding like a hushed snicker, the noise coming almost always when Eva's favoritism would rear its ugly head.

Slowly but surely, words came from the voice, speaking harshly of Eva and her love for Dante.

"I would never treat you like that," the voice had whispered once, Vergil's eyes brimming with rage as he hid in a corner, watching his mother coddle the damned younger child.

"I would never forsake you like that," the voice spoke again on the day that Eva had scolded Vergil viciously for taking a toy from Dante, sending him to sit in the 'corner of shame'.

He could still recall that sinking feeling of embarrassment and dejection when Eva had given Dante an expensive gift for no reason what so ever, her eyes looking surprised when Vergil had asked for his. It was as if the idea of giving Vergil a present had not even dawned on her, her eyes darting to look at her empty hands.

"I'll get you one next time," she'd promised. Vergil had only to look at his more or less empty toy box to know that wouldn't happen.

It was little things, little things she probably never noticed that cut deeply into Vergil. It was things she probably never knew that felt like salt in his wounds. The way he'd watch her at night, thrashing wildly in her empty bed, plagued with feverish dreams of monsters, calling out Dante's name and never his own.

To Vergil, Eva was a horrible mother, though no doubt, Eva never knew it.

Nero became his escape, the one person on his side. Nero and Vergil against the world.

Nero saw what Eva never saw. Nero even began to goad Vergil on, insisting that it was high time the older twin got what he deserved, laughing gleefully in the background when Vergil would push Dante to the floor with all his might.

Pushing soon became absolute punching and Vergil slowly surprised even himself at the hatefulness he bestowed on Dante.

Often he'd catch himself only towards the end of the beating, blinking with surprise when Dante wouldn't wake up. Vergil would shake his head, trying to recall why he'd even begun the assault, trying to fathom what had triggered the absolute meanness and hate that burned inside him.

And then slowly, he began not to care. Slowly he didn't catch himself, slowly, he didn't want to stop.

The evolution of Vergil came as if overnight, numbness seeping into him. It seemed as though the more he implored of Nero, the more he invited the harshness in, the more dull he became to the horrors he enacted on his brother.

And it was an evolution or perhaps an 'evilution,' if you could call it that. As soon as the numbness replaced the shame, joy replaced the numbness. Vergil began to love the pain he inflicted, began to look for new and exciting ways to prolong his attacks on Dante. He even found ways to hide the bruises and cuts from Eva, no longer needing her acceptance of him, only avoiding her discovery so as not to be placed in the corner again.

He'd whisper evil promises to his brother at night, truly intent on fulfilling them if Dante breathed a word to Eva.

Yet in all of it, Vergil slowly came to a harsh understanding that left him entirely confused. For all the awful things he did and said to Dante, the younger twin still completely loved him.

It sent a sick sourness into his belly when he'd realized it, looking at the blood seeping from the little devil's eyes, diluted with tears as Dante cried for Vergil to stop. It even came as an even bigger revolution that though he certainly could, Dante never truly seemed to hit Vergil back.

He'd laid on the ground suddenly, looking straight down into his brother's eyes, searching for a hatred that had to be there. Blood had leaked into Dante's eyes, his tiny fingers curled into the carpet of their bedroom floor as he cringed, expecting another blow. Vergil hadn't landed it though, instead still searching for the loathing that had to be burning like venom within the younger boy.

But it just wasn't there.

Dante didn't hate his brother. Dante simply couldn't.

It was this small encounter that changed the world as we know it, Vergil's resolve now more concrete than ever.

He had to kill them both.

For in that moment, as they stared hard at each other, Vergil saw exactly why Eva always had and always would love Dante more.

Dante was simply a good person, a good soul and Vergil simply was not.

He had felt more than heard Nero's smile and laughter behind him, as he'd run out of the house, wiping away some of the first and certainly the last tears he'd ever cried. He'd run for what seemed like hours, blinded by the hot salt in his eyes, running aimlessly to escape the look he'd seen in Dante's eyes of pure adoration that quite frankly made him sick.

It was as though he couldn't wipe away the memory, those terrified, blood streaked eyes looking up at him, speaking volumes of hurt and of love. He hated it. He hated that he finally understood. He hated that he finally couldn't deny.

He'd planted himself in an empty yard, dead, yellow grass crunching beneath him as he dropped with what felt like the weight of the world. He'd pulled his knees to his chest as he'd rested his back against a prickly old wooden fence, sobbing for the first and the last time.

"Little one," He'd heard the familiar voice. "Little one please don't cry. Little Prince."

It was the first time Nero took on any kind of form, a black rising cloud that formed what look almost like hands on his shoulders. Black fog wiped away his tears, lifting his chin to stare into the dark nothingness that was Nero.

"We have to end this," Nero spoke softly. "This can't go on."

Vergil's head nodded slightly in agreement.

"Do you remember where your mother keeps those silly little jars in her bedroom?"

Vergil again nodded, knowing exactly what Nero planned before the apparition even needed to speak it. Eva had always kept the magical jars in her bedroom, her only means of keeping the underworld out as they cast the strongest known spells in order to veer away demons.

Neither boy was ever EVER to touch the jars and Vergil had only ever seen them but a few times late at night when he'd spied Eva clutching them to her chest, the evil no doubt lurking dangerously close outside.

"You need to crush the jars Vergil," Nero's presence goaded him. "You need to break them into tiny little pieces and your mother can never know. Do you understand?"

Once more, Vergil had nodded.

"When will you come?" He remembered asking, heart feeling so heavy.

"Tonight little Prince," Nero lifted his 'hand' to the boy's head. "You'll see me tonight."

Vergil once more turned a corner, recalling the last memory with little excitement.

He'd walked solemnly back home, feeling the last of his tears dry and crack on his cheeks, eyes burning with an intensity one never sees in someone so young.

He even heard Dante's voice screaming as he'd lifted the jars, one by one, over his head before smashing them to dust in the back yard.

"They protect mama!" Dante had been screaming, trying with all his might to pry the last jar from Vergil's hands. "They protect mama!"

They hadn't done a very good job.

The demons had poured into their house that night, the sun barely set when the stench of bloated carcasses filled the air. The sound had been unearthly, the stretching of dead skin and the screeching of things alive yet not alive, haunting the very memory.

He even smiled a little at the thought, recalling the look on Eva's face when she'd torn open the closet to find it absent of her precious little jars. Her fingers shook as she desperately searched, already knowing that she was doomed.

He'd wanted her to look at him, wanted to see her final look of shock and horror at the results of her crappy parental efforts.

'That's right,' He'd thought. 'you created this. This is your fault.'

But she never did. She never even looked at him before she died.

One. Two. Three.

The love of her life was the last of her thoughts, staring across at her most precious child as she died. It was a death truly worthy of her, as she'd reached her hand to touch him even as her soul reached towards the quiet of oblivion.

One. Two. Three.

He saw and felt her soul go, the flames dancing almost quietly at the end of it all. The dullness sank in her eyes where brilliance used to be, stare still set upon Dante.

The other twin was quickly joining her, terror and panic slowly giving way to indifference as he accepted his fate.

Vergil had turned towards the door, the metal of the knob hot as the flames reached towards it. For a moment he saw his face in the glass of the door, his reflection showing the nihilistic monster that he'd become.

He was no longer numb. He was pure fucking evil and for one tiny second, he didn't like that.

It was in that tiny second that whatever bit of conscience left in Vergil once more reared it's head, the devil turning around and gripping his brother's arm. He could hear Nero screeching in the back of his head, the black smoke suddenly forming the great apparition that hurled threatening words at him.

He'd ignored it, gripping his brother tightly as he forced them out of the house, running faster and farther than he could ever recall doing. He ran until his legs burned, until his stomach turned with nausea and then even farther.

He ran until his arms became so heavy with Dante he figured at any moment they may have very well fallen off. He ran until he simply collapsed, pulling Dante onto his chest and remarking that all efforts might have been in vain, as the younger twin looked to be almost severed in half.

And then he remarked to himself that the time for caring was quite simply over and he'd lifted the other boy off him, letting Dante crumple onto the cold, hard pavement beneath.

Vergil had left him there, on the pinnacle of life and death, torn between both worlds as the small devil twisted with fever and blood loss. And Vergil had promised himself that he didn't care, that the look of love and hurt he'd seen on the boy's face didn't still haunt his thoughts. He'd promised himself that the night had been a success and that the routine of favoritism was over.

And he promised himself that he didn't still see her fingertips in his mind, sliding ever so softly down the tear streaked face.

One. Two. Three.

**A/N: I would just like to thank a few people who definitely helped me get this story back up and running and also provided some inspiration for the newest chapter. **

**N- I bet you don't realize it but it was your original review that showed up in my email that actually inspired me to take a look at this story again. Also, I want to thank you for asking that I put a little more info about Dante and Vergil as kids as it really helped me move this chapter along! Great idea!**

**Mistress of Destruction-thank you so much for your kind words and thoughtfulness. Depression is definitely a toughie but in its own right, did help fuel a lot of this story so I guess it can't be all bad. Plus, I'm starting to think I'm getting a little better at this writing thing again so that boost my confidence a bit! **

**To all others, thank you so much for reading! It's a huge compliment. Also, I'm always open for any ideas so if there are any thoughts on maybe other insights you'd like the story to touch upon, please let me know! **


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